Another factor in our operation there is the transportation of raw material to our cracking site. If we have to transport black walnuts, which give an approximate 10 per cent yield, any distance, the freight adds materially to the cost per pound of the finished material. That is, if we have to pay 10 cents per hundred additional freight cost in transporting them from outlying districts to the cracking plant, that adds a cent a pound to the cost of the finished kernels. All such factors, have to be given weighty consideration, because our business is primarily concerned with making money for the stockholders. If we don't make money for the stockholders, they are not interested in seeing us continue the operation.
Mr. Walker and Mr. McDonald at the present time are out on a crop inspection trip and also making surveys of locations and availability of buildings or sites that might be more advantageous than the one at Henderson, Kentucky. It may be that we will continue the operation there, making modifications in the building, which will result in lower insurance rates. At the present time, with the new crop coming on, we are in a chaotic state of affairs, because we just don't know exactly what's the best path to follow in our operation at Henderson, Kentucky.
Are there any questions?
DR. MCKAY: Will you tell us something about how you handle the nuts in your plant, how they are hulled and cracked, and so forth?
MR. MANGELSDORF: It's a similar operation to what Mr. Lemke described. The nuts are brought in in burlap bags by the farmers and growers and are put in storage in cribs. The plant at Henderson, Kentucky, was a popcorn processing plant, with a large crib under roof where the nuts are stored. After the moisture content is reduced somewhat, they pass through a tumbling drum to remove any of the extraneous hulls and other dirt that might be adhering.
After the nuts are completely freed of all this extraneous matter, they are passed through a series of cracking rollers with screens. The nuts are cracked, by passing between two rollers like a wringer then passed over a shaker screen, the free nut meats passing through the screen. The large material that comes off of the screen is then passed between more closely spaced cracking rollers and then further sifted and screened. Then the various materials that have passed through the screens are run through a Smalley picker. This is nothing more than metal pins on a series of fingers rotating on a roller that presses against a sponge rubber roller. The nut meats adhere to the prongs or points. The shells, not being penetrated by the points of the pins, are not picked up. Then there is a comb that picks off the adhering kernels from the picker prongs. That's the principle of most of the shelling operations of the black walnuts. I don't believe any major changes have been made in the processing of black walnuts in the last ten years.
DR. COLBY: How do you remove the hulls?
MR. MANGELSDORF: We try to buy only hulled walnuts, the farmer and the grower removing the hulls in a tumbler and selling to us only the dehulled walnuts.
The kernels are packed in cartons and shipped to St. Louis for final picking of remaining shells and off-colored nut meats and graded for color, size and quality. After this grading separation is made, they are either packed in our 4-ounce vacuum-packed tins or 30-pound bulk cartons which are then sold through the trade.
MR. WALLICK: What percentage of kernels do you get?