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Come spring, farmers in Lewis County and Southwest Washington will be able to store and offload grain from local farms onto railcars headed up and down the West Coast thanks to the Southwest Washington Grain Project in Chehalis.
Contractors constructing the silos and other equipment as part of the project at the Port of Chehalis put the first bits of grain into its new silos this week, starting Monday evening and stretching into Tuesday and Wednesday. The silos are not ready for full operation, but the addition of grain will allow for the testing of elevators, conveyor belts and other mechanical parts of the port's newest addition.
According to Southwest Washington Growers Cooperative General Manager Jake Fay, the grain silos and everything needed to fill them and load railcars should be operational in the next few months.
The first shipment out of the facility — a load of barley — is expected to depart from the location in the middle of March.
“Part of it is we did have some grain in storage, but we didn't have anywhere to go with it,” Fay said. “Now, we will be able to move the grain in here over the next six weeks. Then we’ll be able to load out and ship it.”
Grain shipments are expected to head for destinations up and down the West Coast, with the first shipment of barley apparently headed for California. Portland and Kalama are other likely destinations in the future. Fay said the larger bins will be used to store between 500 to 600 tons of traditional grains, such as wheat and barley.
Smaller beige-colored silos on the side of the large silver ones — which are visible from the roadway — will store up to 60 tons. According to Fay, those silos will be used mostly for canola before it's transported to Eastern Washington to be processed into canola oil. They may also be used as extra storage for feed grain.
High-quality grains will likely be sold as imports and be shipped away while lower quality grains — or those that may be too wet or mixed in with other materials such as invasive plants and weeds — are more likely to be sold as feed.
Three partner groups, the Port of Chehalis, the Southwest Washington Growers Cooperative and Valley Agrinomics, worked together to coordinate the Southwest Washington Grain Project. Contractors hired by the Port of Chehalis to build the structures first broke ground on the project on port property off Maurin Road back in April 2025.
Now, the project is near completion.
As of Monday evening, Fay was able to point out the last few parts that would be installed, but he added that the facility would not get any taller from that point on. Instead, crews would work out the last few details and tweaks to get the site operational as well as install the final essential parts, such as chutes coming from the top of the silos that will be used to load train cars and semi-trucks with thousands of pounds of grain.
Fay said he's excited to see the facility at work and eager to see how local farmers take advantage of the new facility.
“It’s definitely going to be good to have it up and running this summer,” Fay said. “It’ll be interesting to see how much product does move through it.”
As of Tuesday morning, Fay was expecting regular loads of grain from two grain trucks coming to load the silos with grain already stored in other areas around the county.
