USA – The family-owned wheat handling company, Knappen Milling Company has named Emily K. Likens new president and chief executive officer.

According to World Grain, Likens succeeds her father Charles B. (Chip) Knappen III, who is retiring following 46 years with the business.

She was appointed to company board of directors in 2014, where she has served since then.

Likens attended the University of Arizona and later graduated from the Midwives College of Utah in Salt Lake City with an associate of science in midwifery degree.

The fourth generation family owned flour and wheat processing facility was established in 1929 by Liken’s great-grandfather Charles B. Knappen.

According to a company history prepared by Likens, Knappen was an entrepreneur and farmer.

He acquired a closed mill, and began shipping bran to Kellogg Co. in Battle Creek, Michigan, U.S., about 10 miles east of Augusta.

The company has been engaged in milling, producing edible bran as its principal product and flour as a by-product, supplying Kellogg’s with flour, used in Fruit Loops and Apple Jacks cereals.

“A lot of my identity is grounded in the mill,” she said.

“When I was young, my father would come into work on weekends, and I would go with him. I’d be in the office and walk around the mill.

People who worked in the mill in those days are supervisors now, people I’ve known 30 to 40 years.

I’ve always wanted to be here, but there is value in having had the opportunity to mature. Timing was important,” said Emily K. Likens.

Chip Knappen succeeded his father as president in 1979, and in the early 2000s launched a three-year project to reflow the mill more conventionally when Kellogg stopped using heavy bran that had been Knappen’s principal product for decades.

For the last 15 years, Knappen Milling has focused its production on soft wheat milled products, including cookie/cracker, cake flour and pastry flour and whole wheat flour.

According to the 2019 Grain & Milling Annual published by Sosland Publishing Company, Knappen Milling has 4,800 Cwts (Cwts is abbreviation for 100 pounds) of daily milling capacity and 2 million bushels of grain storage.

Knappen mills both soft red winter and soft white winter wheat.