Holding Their Own.

 Article and photos courtesy of JP Tank.

 "Serving the American farmer and building the best concrete tanks in the country,” is the cornerstone of JP Tank, an innovative round concrete tank design and construction company based in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

Although a fairly new company, having been founded in 2019, JP Tank is making a name for itself in the agricultural industry across the U.S. thanks to its innovative tank design and construction that have been built nationwide. Focusing primarily on anaerobic digester tanks, agricultural waste storage tanks, and feed storage tanks, the JP Tank team are agriculture concrete specialists who have extensive background in the industry. They understand what it takes to create solid round concrete storage tanks that agricultural producers will utilize for decades to come.

Having grown up in the farming industry, Josh “JP” Pipping, founder of JP Tank began his career in the agricultural concrete construction business in 1999, working alongside his parents at their family’s concrete business. Over time, JP rose up in the ranks of the family’s original agricultural concrete business, until he decided to embark on his own business venture in 2019, initially working alongside his cousin constructing farm drainage systems. Soon after, JP secured a large agricultural concrete project at a dairy farm in Missouri.

“The tank in Missouri provided us with a very large project right off the bat, and we hit the ground running,” JP says. “After that, we secured several smaller projects that kept us going through the end of the COVID pandemic. Being a smaller company, it was a challenging time and somewhat intense, but we made it through.”

Indeed, they have. Today, JP Tank has made a name for itself throughout the agricultural community, earning accolades aplenty from producers looking for state-of-the-art round concrete agricultural tanks. From anaerobic digestors to waste storage to feed storage, the team at JP Tank understands the importance of providing the highest-quality product for producers’ needs. In addition to storage tanks, JP Tank also provides construction services for a wide variety of concrete projects including feed storage bunkers, concrete foundations for steel digester tanks, 3D concrete flatwork, building foundations, and more. During his 24-year tenure in the industry, JP has built over 200 round concrete tanks, as well as hundreds of other large agricultural concrete project.

“We are known for our unique round concrete tanks,” JP says. “Early on, we were designing and constructing a tremendous amount of anaerobic digestors – from South Dakota to Wisconsin.” Properly storing and using manure from animal feeding operations is a big business and an important one – without the use of leading-edge concrete storage containers like those developed by JP Tank, the quality of a region’s water supply and air would be significantly at risk.

“The amount of digestor projects that we completed really put JP Tank on the map,” JP says. As a result of these projects, JP and his team have been able to refine their design and construction systems for their concrete tanks, resulting in streamlined efficiencies from start to finish.

“We started this company from the ground up, having run almost the same company prior to this with my family,” JP says. “Because of our extensive background, we’ve been able to hand select the people we have on our team. This means that we have a solid group of professionals who understand what we are trying to accomplish and how we strive to make our clients happy.”

And while JP Tank specializes in agricultural round concrete tanks, they also build waste storage vessels in a variety of shapes and sizes – depending on the specific needs of each client. They’ve constructed tanks for smaller producers as well as having installed the second largest waste storage tank in Wisconsin, measuring 400 feet in diameter and holding 17 million gallons of waste from an ever-growing dairy farm.

“We enjoy working with different types of clients for different storage projects,” JP says. “For many of our clients, if they have a featured project in mind, they will tell us what size tank they want and we can price it. Other times, we will help them determine exactly what size and type of tank will work best based on the size of their farming operation. Because of our extensive experience, we have formulas in place that identify the exact specifications and costs involved in each proposed tank.”

So why has JP Tank focused extensively on round concrete tanks? Quite simply, because round tanks by design are much more efficient and stronger than straight-walled tanks, which are strong in the corners but weak in the middle.

“Round tanks allow for less concrete, less rebar and it’s more efficient,” JP says. “This means it’s also cheaper to build.”

In addition to having developed streamlined design and constructed methods, the tanks produced by JP Tank are NRCS approved, which means the design for the company’s products are pre-approved and are exclusive to JP Tank.

“This means that when a farmer is going for NRCS funding, they don’t have to go through all of the hoops in getting a tank design approved or have it inspected or checked by NRCS, which can be time-consuming,” JP says. “The project moves along fairly quickly and because our designs are NRCS approved, it saves time in the permitting process as well.”

Soon after JP Tank was established, the company was tasked with constructing a series of anaerobic digester tanks for several clients. One such waste storage tank was enormous, measuring 400 feet in diameter and 19 feet tall – the largest tank JP Tank had yet built.

“This was for a dairy farm that was expanding and needed storage, more storage than what they currently had,” JP says. “Our team was able to come in and build this enormous tank in less than two months, which was a big feat considering we had to deal with major concrete shortages at the time.”

Looking to the future, JP Tank is well prepared for the exploding anaerobic digester market. “We have a lot of experience and a great system for building these tanks,” JP says. “I think we will be a major player in the digester and waste storage tank market going forward.”