Diversification, transformation, and tradition drive success
With two centuries of milling experience under its belt, Star of the West believes that what has brought them this far is transformation and innovation – and that is what will lead them into the future. Their track record proves them right. With a passion for modernization, a diversified product portfolio, a courageous team, and a close partnership with Bühler, they are driving the company to success.
Nick Manley, September 2026
Ask anyone from Michigan where they are from and they will hold up their right hand, fingers straight up and thumb slightly open and point to an area on their hand. They do this for good reason – the state of Michigan, in the Midwest of the US – is shaped like a mitten. Four fingers together, thumb slightly open. The town of Frankenmuth, MI sits just below that dip between the thumb and the first finger. The town’s name translates loosely to “courage of the Franconians” – a fitting backdrop for Star of the West, a business that has spent generations evolving, investing, and pushing beyond convention.
At first glance, Frankenmuth, with its Bavarian character and old-world charm, does not seem the obvious home for one of the more innovative milling companies in the agri-business segment. Yet that contrast is part of what makes the story of Star of the West so compelling. Beneath the familiar setting is a business that has built its reputation on progress, resilience, and the courage to evolve.
The story of Star of the West is one of continuity and reinvention. Its origins trace back to the Hubinger family, whose milling expertise spans more than two centuries in Germany. When this heritage crossed the Atlantic, it laid the foundation for what would become a well-established Midwest agribusiness. Over time, ownership transitioned to a group of local farmers – embedding the company firmly within the agricultural community it serves.
We come to Bühler for solutions. We are not only interested in the equipment that they provide. We’re looking for a new approach. We don’t always take a conventional approach to what we do. We do a lot of unique and innovative things.
Karina Spencer,
Executive Vice President of Flour Milling at Star of the West
Today, Star of the West continues to build on that foundation by serving a broad mix of customers, markets, and product needs. Flour remains central to the business, but the company’s development is defined by a determination to go further than standard offerings. “In many ways this makes our job a little more difficult,” says Karina Spencer, Executive Vice President of Flour Milling for Star of the West. “Because each customer has their own individual needs, their own preferences when it comes to their flour and wheat ingredient inputs. But it also makes our job pretty exciting every day.”
Harkening back to that courage of the town’s founders, Star of the West continually rises to their customers’ challenges. “We've never shied away from a challenge,” Spencer says. “We like to think of ourselves as innovators. When a customer needs something that doesn't exist in the marketplace, we would like them to come to us and to think of us as their partner in finding the right solution.”
And they do. A good example of that is the investment Star of the West made in their new mill in Ligonier, Indiana. The industry had been challenged with finding a way to reduce pathogens by five logs and still maintain flour functionality. It took several years of research to discover a pathway forward for that, and in the Ligonier mill the company was able to successfully install a novel pasteurization system that is seated right in the middle of the milling process, producing a pasteurized flour for the industry that has no impact on the flour’s functional characteristics or use in processing.
In normal applications of wheat flour and wheat ingredients, the baker or other processor performs the kill step for pathogens. In certain applications where consumers can buy refrigerated doughs or baking mixes or cookie dough, the cook step, or kill step, resides with the consumer. Using a pasteurized flour in these applications ensures the pathogen kill step has already been performed, making the product safe even before a baking or cooking step.
Going beyond the conventional
As long ago as the 1940s, when they acquired their first dry edible bean processing facility, Star of the West determined they would “do more than offer conventional flour”, as Spencer says. Adopting the broader business mindset of moving from commodity supply toward differentiated solutions, stronger customer relevance, and a more future-ready portfolio has led to the company managing more than 30 locations across six different states. This includes four mills producing 46,000 hundredweights (2,337 tonnes) of flour a day.
“We became diverse as an agribusiness with the intent of sustaining our flour milling business,” says Spencer. As the company developed their network of elevators, it was to secure the grain that was grown in the region. As they developed their agronomic services and retail locations, it was to help support the farmers so that they are successful in implementing high yield management practices, ensuring they are profitable in what they do. As they moved into dry edible bean processing, it was to facilitate the long crop rotations experienced in the state of Michigan.
This dual focus – depth in milling and serving customers across adjacent agricultural segments – positions Star of the West as a responsive partner to customers and reduces reliance on a single commodity, adeptly navigating changing consumer demands.
Using myBühler improves our workflow by having that access at the tip of our fingers, on any mobile device or tablets.
Tanner Elliott,
Corporate Milling Superintendent at Star of the West
Sustaining more than business
In a market where customers increasingly expect transparency and measurable progress, sustainability is no longer separate from operational performance. It is central to Star of the West’s operations. “We take a commonsense approach when it comes to sustainability,” says Spencer. “We are not necessarily interested in just posting solar panels on top of our roof or investing in wind farms. What we're interested in is where social responsibility and business continuity intersect.” For Star of the West, this approach translated into working with their farmers on regenerative agriculture and operating their mills efficiently.
In 2024, the company partnered with Bühler’s Environmental Impact Services to conduct a full assessment of their Scopes 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions. Along with that, they conducted a life cycle analysis on their flour, giving them the means to quantify the carbon footprint of every pound of flour they produce. The company identified several thousand acres of wheat that their farmers had and worked with them to collect the data on their fields. These efforts combined to give Star of the West an accurate emissions assessment of the flour. “What we were able to find is that compared to the national average, we achieved a 46 percent reduction of carbon,” says Spencer. That paved the way for them to introduce their Star Patent 360° flour, which is a low emission flour. “It does not require any identity preserved program for the grain, and it doesn't require any special handling or processing,” says Spencer. “It is a very simple solution for our customers who are seeking to reduce their carbon footprint and meet their own sustainability goals.”
Partners in innovation and modernization
“We’ve been a longtime customer of Bühler, and I think that Bühler has secured its position in the milling equipment industry as the gold standard,” says Spencer. “They’ve earned that reputation.” Indeed, Star of the West has made considerable investments over the last ten years in Bühler equipment. In 2016, Star of the West commissioned a greenfield mill, which was a full mill solution provided by Bühler. In 2025, they commissioned an additional three milling units in Ligonier, Indiana. Again, they relied on Bühler technology from start to finish. Then there’s the investments made in Frankenmuth. “We've replaced all of our roll stands here recently with Bühler equipment,” says Spencer. “And in 2021, we commissioned a new Bühler state-of-the-art flaking system.”
The flaking system in Frankenmuth is an extension of an already robust product portfolio. It gives the company the opportunity to flake other grains and different inputs. “We have the capability of flaking corn and ancient grains,” says Spencer. “I like to say, if you can grow it, we can flake it.” In collaboration with their edible bean division, they’ve even flaked small red beans and pinto beans. “We can bring beans to more eating occasions, like breakfast, snacking, and on-the-go foods,” says Spencer. “They are a nutritional powerhouse that just require a little innovation to deliver them in a new format.”
The relationship between the two companies is symbiotic. Star of the West pushes Bühler to innovate, and Bühler provides the solutions to Star of the West that allow them to stretch their creative muscles. “We come to Bühler for solutions,” says Spencer. “We are not only interested in the equipment that they provide. We're looking for a new approach. We don't always take a conventional approach to what we do. We do a lot of unique and innovative things.”
Star of the West was the first company to help commission Bühler’s Food Application Center in Plymouth, Minnesota. And they’ve returned on several occasions. “We appreciate the ability to do pilot trials with the tools and expertise that Bühler has made accessible to the industry, and we take full advantage of it.
Star of the West’s drive to innovate is something that is felt in a very real way by Sven Kunz, Bühler’s Sales Director for Milling Solutions in North America. “The approach Star of the West have to their finished products, pushes us into a new way of thinking,” says Kunz. “It's not just the traditional flour milling way. They push us to come up with new solutions and new innovations.”
This is most evident in the pasteurized flour project. How that came to be is another story in itself. Suffice to say it involved wheat being air freighted to France, followed by a trip to Uzwil, Switzerland for a round of successful milling trials in Bühler’s Grain Innovation Center. This resulted in a unique process being built into the new Ligonier plant. “The knowledge and the knowhow behind the relationship is really what's made Bühler a gold standard in the industry,” says Spencer. “And it’s why we've partnered with them on these projects.”
Star of the West’s corporate milling superintendent, Tanner Elliott, echoes Karina’s enthusiasm for Bühler. “It’s pretty well known that Bühler makes the best milling equipment in the world,” says Elliott. “They also have the technical expertise to help back it up.”
Star of the West has a reputation for achieving high outputs compared to other mills. “If that is our reputation, I'd be very proud of that,” says Elliott. “I think our group is pretty fantastic in not accepting the standard as our ceiling and really striving to see what we can add or improve on as we go day to day,” he says. To help them with that, they rely on the performance of their Bühler milling equipment. According to Elliott, Bühler systems perform best in class in terms of both quality and performance. The equipment is painless to adjust and can be trusted to hold those adjustments to run a consistent, continuous operation. He backs that up saying “not only does it hold well, it's easy to work on, and you can just trust it to do the job you're tasking it to do.”
Elliott’s praise doesn’t stop at the equipment, though. The digital platform myBühler further enhances his experience, offering new ways to troubleshoot, perform maintenance, and increase uptime. “Using myBühler improves our workflow by having access to user manuals at the tip of your fingers, on any mobile device or tablets,” says Elliott. He touts the ability to quickly resolve issues at the machine. “You can easily look up the error code that the equipment is giving you and pull it up right on your phone or tablet and troubleshoot it at the machine, which I think is a huge benefit.”
Transition as a corporate value
The constant that has flowed through the Star of the West timeline is transition. It’s clear the company’s team is comfortable not pigeonholing themselves or living the status quo, a collective cultural trait Spencer attributes to her predecessor, Mike Fassezke. “He's been a true visionary,” she says. “I have a great appreciation for his strategic and intentional approach to growing our business.” She is taking over the leadership of the flour milling division from him after his nearly 50-year career with the company and gives him credit for Star of the West’s record of “growing responsibly and synchronously with our supply chain, both upstream and downstream.”
That type of thinking has carried Star of the West forward since 1870, quietly cementing its place in the food supply chain and building incredible experience. An experience that rather than keeping it tied to the past, instead provides it with a base from which to modernize – with confidence. From Frankenmuth to Ligonier, from conventional flour to differentiated products, and from established operations to new digital and sustainability tools, Star of the West is shaping a new chapter while staying rooted in what made it strong in the first place.
Star of the West was founded in 1870 and produces premium wheat flour products and dry edible beans, as well as offering agronomy services to their farmer suppliers. They have four flour mills located in New York, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. Bühler supplies these locations with complete milling technology solutions and ongoing services.
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