Mondelez International Flour Mill

2221 Front Street

Many people take this mill for granted when they admire Toledo's Maumee riverfront from downtown. Maybe these facts will change how they view it in the future.

• Soft wheat flour milling at this Front Street site dates back to 1892. The National Biscuit Co. (NABISCO) bought the operation in 1926. The current facility was built in 1976.

• This operation is the second largest flour mill in the United States and one of the largest flour mills in the world. 

• The six-story, 61,000 square foot mill processes more than 80 percent of all the flour used by NABISCO and Kraft, which merged in 2000 to become one of the country's largest food manufacturers. In 2008, the companies split and the NABISCO name was dropped and Kraft's snack food line was renamed Mondelez International.

• According to Sosland Publishing Co.’s 2017 Grain & Milling Annual, the Mondelez facility has a daily flour production capacity of 3.1 million pounds and storage capacity of 5.5 million bushels of wheat.

• So how important is this facility? In 2014, the mill was shut down for a week after a train derailment knocked out power to the facility. Since the mill is a significant source of millfeed, a byproduct of the flour milling process widely used in livestock feed, acute shortages of millfeed were reported in a variety of locations and spot prices trended sharply higher until the mill was put back into production.