About Bratney

The Company hires its first full-time engineer and secretary and moves into a “new” office building with two rooms, in Clive, Iowa.

The Ken Bratney Company designs and builds its first complete seed corn facility, for O’s Gold Seed company in Parkersburg, Iowa.

After successful use in other seed and agricultural markets, the Ken Bratney Company forever changed the process flow of a soybean seed plant after adding the first of its kind Gravity Table in the soybean seed market at Northrup King in Jefferson, Iowa. This innovation set a new standard for quality in soybean conditioning.

The Ken Bratney Co. acquires Reid-Strutt Co. (Ken Bratney’s former employer) in the Pacific Northwest. The company was now doing sales and construction work from Michigan to Washington.

Paul Bratney is appointed President and Ken Bratney becomes Chairman of the Board of The Ken Bratney Co. This same year, Bruce Bratney joins the family business. Bruce is a Civil Engineer from the University of Iowa, and worked with Boeing prior to joining Bratney Companies. Bruce led the company’s sales efforts in the coffee and brewing industries from the Boise, ID office until his retirement in 2020.

Bratney Equipment Company is formed, to focus exclusively on the goal of bringing the highest quality and equipment solutions to Bratney customers with a special emphasis on continuous innovation. The Ken Bratney Company continues to focus on design-build construction for seed, grain and food conditioning and processing facilities.

The brand name Bratney Companies is established to represent both Ken Bratney Company and Bratney Equipment Company throughout the U.S. and South American markets they serve.

Cimbria A/S of Thisted, Denmark appoints Bratney Companies as its exclusive representative for the United States, Argentina and Brazil for its complete line of seed and grain cleaning and drying equipment. This milestone is the first of several proprietary equipment partnerships that serve as the cornerstone of Bratney’s commitment to provide quality and innovation to their customer base.

The Bratney offices in Bellevue, Washington and Twin Falls, Idaho combine forming a new office in Boise, Idaho focusing on engineering, design and construction services for the Western United States. Bruce Bratney manages the office.

Bratney Companies introduces color sorting technology to the hybrid seed corn and soybean industries. Long known in the edible industry, color sorters had not been used in the seed industry prior to now. Since this time, hundreds of color sorters have been integrated into plants across the US by Bratney and have become a standard machine in today’s modern plant. In other corn growing regions of the world, seed plants have also adapted this technology, following the lead of the US.

Peter Kenneth Bratney joins Bratney Companies. Peter is a 2003 graduate of Boston College (B.S. in Business Management) and a 2006 graduate of the University of Iowa, College of Law (J.D.). Prior to joining Bratney Companies, Peter practiced law with the Brick Gentry Law Firm in Des Moines.

Bratney Companies continues to focus on packaging automation and begins offering complete packaging lines to the seed, feed and food industries while establishing an inhouse packaging division complete with technical product sales, parts sales, and to date nine packaging equipment technicians.

Bratney Companies expands its presence in the markets of California, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico through its acquisition of Vogel Sales Engineering, headquartered in Sacramento, CA. Vogel, known for many years in the rice, almond, vegetable seed and specialty markets, expands its product offering and services to its clients through this effort.

As the hybrid seed corn industry introduces the concept of RIB (Refuge in the Bag), Bratney develops a bagging scale to accurately meet the stringent requirements of the EPA but to also develop the software that accurately records each bag to meet documentation requirements.

To aid with the RIB (Refuge in the Bag) revolution, Bratney Companies developed a robotic vision sorting system that confirms the blending ratio of refuge seed meets the EPA standards. Several of these advanced sorting machines are delivered to the seed industry.

Bratney Companies forms the Operations Leadership Team to provide direction for the company through the development of business strategy, budgets, and goal-setting.

BoMill, a manufacturer of kernel-by-kernel grain sorting systems selects Bratney as their exclusive partner in the United States. BoMill’s technology allows kernel-by-kernel sorting of grains into fractions based on their internal properties. This partnership strengthened Bratney’s position as the leader in advanced vision sorting technologies for seed and food while bringing Bratney customers a technology that is only available with a BoMill system.

Bratney completes major BoMill TriQ industrial grain quality sorter for a large grain terminal in the Midwest. Bratney delivered, installed and commissioned eight TriQ sorters to remove wheat rust.

Omas, a manufacturer of patented energy saving rolls stands and other milling equipment selects Bratney as their partner in the United States. This proprietary partnership rounded out Bratney’s turn-key approach to the food, feed, seed and grain industries will a complimentary suite of equipment technologies to process or condition raw materials directly from the field to finished product.

Bratney completes construction of the first Omas mill in the United States for a family-owned mill in the North East. The project was Bratney’s largest flour mill to date and was delivered turnkey including process design, equipment selection, mill construction, equipment installation and startup. Notable equipment solutions included Omas’ patended Leonardo roller mills utilizing shaft mounted rollers and a kinetic energy recovery system capable of reducing energy consumption by as much as 70% compared to traditional roller mills.

Bratney completes their largest turn-key project in company history with successful delivery of an edible sunflower processing plant to a global food company. The $37mm project is located in the Midwest and largely focused on brining, blending, roasting and packaging of edible sunflower seeds. Planning for the project started in early 2015 with final commissioning taking place summer of 2016.

Bratney celebrates the sale of their 40^th packaging project with partner Concetti in just over 3 years, notching a record year of automated packaging equipment sales for many technically challenging applications including milled corn, durum flour, animal feed and feed premixes and seed.