How It’s Made

Did you know?
High oleic sunflowers do not follow the sun as the myth states.
The Process
One third of what Colorado Mills produces is sunflower oil while the other two thirds is livestock feed. The demand for higher quality livestock feed is growing just as fast as the food industry, and Colorado Mills is well ahead of the game. Colorado Mills’ feed is high in protein and minerals that are essential in livestock diets.
Crushing
Colorado Mills has a personal interest in the well-being of our consumers. We are a no-solvent extraction facility that only uses pressure to extract the oil from the sunflower seeds. This process does not produce as high of a yield as other facilities that utilize petroleum based hexane solvents to extract the oil from their seeds.
Refining
Crude sunflower oil is pumped through a filter press to pull out small particles of the crushed seeds that remain in the oil. Through the entire process nothing is wasted at Colorado Mills. The cake that is filtered from the oil is sold to ranchers as a supplement that is rich in protein and minerals.
Colorado Mills’ refinery is a state of the art facility that has the capability of producing 12,000 gallons of oil per day. The refining of oil is carefully monitored to ensure each batch of oil is finished to the highest quality. Our refining process does not use synthetic chemicals and does not winterize the oil. The winterization process can strip the oil of nutrients and vitamin E. Our end product has a simple ingredient list – 100% natural sunflower oil. The natural occurring oleic acid in sunflower oil allows our oil to perform better than chemical filled oils in restaurants and your kitchen.
Packaging
Colorado Mills has a wide range of volumes that our sunflower oil is packaged in. From each bottle to every railroad car Colorado Mills takes pride in packaging our sunflower oil.
- 750 ml Bottles
- 35 lbs JIBs
- 420 lbs Drums
- 2,000 lbs Totes
- 45,000 Semi Tankers
- 25,000 gal Railroad Cars