Lemley is no stranger to the peanut industry. He retired from Golden Peanut operation as Executive Vice President in 1998. But when he got the call to head up the Tifton Quality Peanuts project, it was an opportunity in the industry he couldn’t turn down. “We’re bringing together the farmers and manufacturers,” he said. “It only makes sense.”

Tifton Quality Peanuts seems to be paying off before it’s even up and running. “The company has already sold out of stock and have people on a waiting list to buy,” Lemley said.

They are also using some of the latest technology in the peanut industry for storing and shelling the crop. The shelling plant is under construction, but will shell 75,000 tons of peanuts a year and employee about 50 people. “Up until 2003, there had not been a new shelling plant built since the late 1980’s,” Lemley said. Meanwhile the industry has changed with new equipment and computers available. “Tifton Quality Peanuts will have an ultra modem shelling plant,” Lemley said. “It will be a clean product in a clean and dust free environment.”

But it’s t e on-site storage domes that may be the biggest change in how business is done. Using domes for storage is a new concept in the peanut industry and it’s a concept that unfold-ed in the mind of Jack Chastain, president of Doster Warehouse Inc. in Rochelle, Georgia. “I first ran into domes looking at second homes,” Chastain said, “but my wife vetoed that.” Chastain never got his dome home, but he didn’t forget about the round buildings.

It was when he was doing consulting work in the southern part of Mexico that he started thinking about the domes again. “They wanted to know what kind of peanut houses to use,” he said. “It’s 68 degrees there all year and they were sitting on a fault line, so they didn’t need metal houses.” He thought the domes might work.

That company never invested in the domes, but Chastain did. He took the idea to food specialist who told him anything was better than the metal warehouses used by the peanut industry. He decided it was worth the risk. Other industries have used domes for years. They are the main storage facilities used for powder concrete and salt, Chastain said. And if they work the way he expects, he says there won’t be any more metal warehouses built for storing peanuts. “I don’t think you could make me build another metal warehouse,” he said. “We’re trying to stop the aging process. Inside the domes, the peanuts don’t become dark-stained or rancid. You can shell year round without your product being destroyed.”

The farmers who own Tifton Quality Peanuts visited Chastain and his domes and were convinced the domes would work. “The first two domes are being completed now and will be ready for this year’s new crop,” Lemley said. Eventually there will be three domes that store 35,000 tons of peanuts. World Domes, the company out of Idaho Falls, Idaho, that built the domes for Doster Warehouse, is con- structing the domes for Tifton Quality Peanuts.