"Most of our customers were beat up the last two years. They were beat up pretty badly. They were almost willing to say, anything can do better than what I've done. We went back and analyzed the trends and everything pointed to marketing problems that occurred during the July/August period."
The Andersons began to look at different ways they could enable their customer to breakout of poor marketing habits and potentially capture more value in the market. According to Cripe, when the DRC pricing tool came along it fit right into with what The Andersons were already doing in helping their various grower-customer segments.
"We have various styles of customers. There are the ones who just want the average prices. They're just looking to do something," says Cripe. "Then we have our dominant customers. The ones that say, I want to set a price.
"The DRC pricing tool gives us the ability to lock in our originations while also helping those customers be more proactive and unemotional with their marketing decisions.
"No matter the customer segment, the main benefits to a grower remain the same. Cripe states, "The program helps take the emotion out of marketing decisions for the grower and gives automatic execution on a contract's pricing."
And for the elevator, Cripe feels the biggest benefit is that The Andersons get the bushels on the books. "We really hate to miss bushels," says Cripe.
The Andersons have locations through the Midwest including: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. The Andersons' 14 elevators have a combined storage capacity of 80 million bushels.
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