Besides being the newest flour mill in the United States, the Ardent Mills flour mill built along the Gulf coast in metropolitan Tampa, Florida, US, has several details that set it apart. Advanced analytics, state-of-the-art equipment, unusually large grain storage capacity and unique supply chain capabilities are among the mill’s distinguishing features.

At 17,500 cwts of daily flour milling capacity, the Port Redwing mill is not Ardent Mills’ largest and is not among the 25 largest flour mills in the United States. With the capacity to receive large quantities of wheat, though, Ardent Mills constructed a large grain elevator at the Port Redwing mill, with 4.1 million bushels of storage capacity.

The elevator may be the largest ever built concurrent with the construction of a US flour mill and, according to the 2022 Grain & Milling Annual published by Sosland Publishing Co., it is the sixth largest elevator of any US flour mill currently operating. The concrete elevator includes 12, 50-foot-concrete bins with 300,000 bushels of grain storage apiece as well as a number of smaller grain bins.

This year’s World Flour Day is planned for March 20 and will be celebrated under the motto “Flour and People-Flour means the world to us.” The focus for this third World Flour Day is the significance of flour for each person. 

World Flour Day was initiated by the FlourWorld Museum to honor flour as one of the most important staple foods. The FlourWorld Museum in Wittenburg near Hamburg, Germany, holds the world’s largest collection of flour sacks, with more than 3,700 sacks from 140 countries. Flour.Power.Life is the guiding principle under which the sacks tell about the traditions, history and myths of flour.

As part of World Flour Day, the museum will unveil the Flour Sack of the Year, celebrating a flour sack design that best illustrates this year’s motto. Winners are displayed in the museum, an initiative of Mühlenchemie, a member of the Stern-Wywiol Gruppe.

In honor of World Flour Day, here are six previous Flour Sack of the Year honorees.