Cairnspring Mills has opened Blue Mountain Mill, a 27,000-sq-ft stone mill in Pendleton, Ore., built in partnership with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
The mill is located at Coyote Business Park, on tribal land at the base of the Blue Mountains. CTUIR leased the site to Cairnspring for 50 years and invested $5 million in the company, marking the tribes’ first equity stake in a private company.
Commercial production is expected to begin in November. Once fully operational, Blue Mountain Mill will increase Cairnspring’s annual milling capacity from about 8 million lbs to more than 115 million lbs. The mill will produce Cairnspring flour and provide milling capacity for regional and national customers that sell flour under their own labels.
The company says the added capacity will allow it to buy more grain directly from Pacific Northwest farmers at prices above the commodity market. At full capacity, Cairnspring expects to source wheat from approximately 60,000 acres, generate more than $22 million a year for farmers, and create more than 22 local living-wage jobs.
Blue Mountain Mill combines traditional stone milling with modern blending and quality controls. The facility is designed for high-volume hard red wheat shipped by truckload. Cairnspring’s original mill in Burlington, Wash., will focus on unique grain varieties, specialty flours, and product innovation.
“Flour has been treated as a commodity for so long that it’s easy to forget how much the grain, healthy soil, the farmer, and the milling process matter,” says Kevin Morse, Co-founder and CEO of Cairnspring Mills. “We’ve spent a decade building direct relationships with growers and making premium stone-milled flour that bakers choose for its flavor and performance. Blue Mountain Mill is an example of what I call the remarkable middle infrastructure we’ve been working toward: a human-scale mill and model that serves real markets, supports farmers and keeps value in the community where the grain is grown and processed.”
The project was financed through a mix of public and private partners, including Steward, Native American Bank, Mission Driven Finance, eight Native community development financial institutions, USDA, the State of Oregon, mission-aligned investors, and community investors. Financing also included New Markets Tax Credits and EB-5 investment.
“Wheat is king in Umatilla County, but for generations most of its value has left with the grain,” says Bill Tovey, Director of the CTUIR Department of Economic and Community Development. “This mill changes that. It brings value-added agriculture home, creates local jobs and gives the Tribes ownership in a growing company that can benefit our people and our neighbors for decades to come.”
Cairnspring says it is working to make regenerative farming measurable within the region’s grain supply. The company says it became the first flour company to earn The Climate Label and the first flour company to become Certified Regenerative by A Greener World. Growers in Cairnspring’s network have enrolled more than 44,000 acres in AGW certification, with more than 100,000 acres projected by the end of 2027.
Blue Mountain Mill is the second mill in Cairnspring’s network. The company says future sites are under consideration in Maryland and Colorado.
