Texas firm plans 3 ethanol plants
Harvest BioFuels LLC of Dallas, Texas, plans to build three ethanol plants in north-central Iowa that could produce 300 million gallons of the fuel a year, the company announced Wednesday.
Construction of a plant near Galbraith in eastern Kossuth County is scheduled to begin in April and is expected to be completed by June 2008. Construction of plants near Garner in Hancock County and near Gilmore City in Pocahontas County will begin later this year, said Bob Payne, the company’s chief executive officer.
North-central Iowa is already dotted with ethanol plants, and the announcement will add to concerns that the ethanol industry is in danger of being overbuilt. The demand for corn for ethanol has pushed up grain and land prices, and pork producers and beginning farmers say they are worried that increased costs will threaten their livelihoods.
Although the three plants will be located in areas where there are several existing ethanol plants, Payne said he believes there will be enough corn for ethanol production because of increased acres planted to corn and higher yields from improved corn hybrids.
When operating at full capacity, each plant will use about 37 million bushels of corn a year. Corn will be procured through the Stateline Cooperative, which has headquarters in Burt, and 12 locations in Iowa, Payne said.
Each plant is designed to handle train shipments of ethanol and dried distillers grain for livestock feed, Payne said.
Vogelbusch, an Austrian company recognized as a world leader in ethanol fermentation and processing, will supply the technology to run the three production plants, Payne said.
About 100 ethanol facilities worldwide use Vogelbusch technology, including 14 plants in North America that produce more than 750 million gallons of fuel ethanol annually, he said.
The plants will be constructed by Austin Industrial, based in Houston, and engineered by Fru-Con of St. Louis.
Iowa is the No. 1 ethanol-making state with 25 plants producing 1.7 billion gallons a year.
Twenty-one plants are either under construction or being expanded and will produce another 1.6 billion gallons of ethanol when in operation.
Each bushel of corn produces about 2.8 gallons of ethanol.
Producing 3.3 billion gallons of ethanol would require more than 1.1 billion bushels of corn a year.
In 2006, Iowa farmers produced 2.05 billion bushels of corn, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates.
