Evan Grong Promoted At Valley Queen

Evan Grong has been promoted to the position of transportation and milk procurement manager at Valley Queen Cheese Factory. He will assume the duties held by Jody Kuper who will retire on April 30, after 36 years at Valley Queen.

Jason Mischel, Valley Queen’s vice president-sales and procurement said, “As Valley Queen’s project manager since 2017, Evan has played a key role in managing all aspects of numerous projects including “VQ Next”, the $53 million expansion of our existing dairy processing plant, which will increase our processing capacity by 25 percent to more than five million pounds of milk a day.”

Prior to joining Valley Queen, Grong was a business supervisor at Otter Tail Power Company in Big Stone City, where he was responsible for the plant’s administrative staff, capital, operating and maintenance budgets, financial forecasting and reporting, and plant payroll functions. From 2004 until 2013, Grong was the corporate accounts manager at Cliff Viessman, Inc., in Gary, where he managed $40 million in annual expenses for the transportation firm.

“Evan’s past experience in dairy logistics, combined with his strong project management skills, will serve him well as we implement more projects designed to increase the efficiency of our transportation network,” explained Mischel.

A graduate of South Dakota State University in Brookings, Grong has a bachelor of arts degree in business economics and a minor in communications. He has been involved in the South Dakota Leadership Academy since 2018. For the past 14 years, he has been an active member of the Canby, Minnesota and Milbank volunteeer fire departments. He is a Milbank City Council member and serves on the Milbank Planning and Zoning Committee. Grong and his wife, Angie, live in Milbank with their two daughters Kalli, 10, and Kendra, seven.