CHS Acquires Patriot's Ethanol Plant in Illinois, Start-Up Under Way

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--CHS Incorporated (NASDAQ:CHSCP) (Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota), a farmer-owned cooperative and global energy, grains and foods company, acquired a fuel-ethanol plant in Annawan, Illinois, from Patriot Holdings LLC. The new subsidiary will be renamed CHS-Annawan.

The plant, which produces about 125 million gallons of fuel ethanol per year, began production in September 2008. Patriot Holdings started construction on a 5 million-gallon-per-year biodiesel unit in fourth-quarter 2014, and start-up procedures are under way on the estimated $10 million unit.

Technology provider Jatrodiesel Incorporated (Miamisburg, Ohio) is on-site assisting with start-up, and the unit is expected to begin producing biodiesel by October 2015. The unit will receive corn oil feedstock from the corn-extraction system Patriot installed in 2011. The company had been selling corn oil to other biodiesel producers, but the facility now will be able to produce biodiesel on-site from the 40 million bushels of corn the plant processes annually.

This will be Centex Harvest States' (CHS) second acquisition of a fuel-ethanol plant. CHS acquired the former Illinois River Energy plant in Rochelle, Illinois, back in June 2014. That plant has a capacity of 125 million gallons per year.

Plans are still developing for a cellulosic ethanol production unit at the Annawan site. Patriot hired Leifmark LLC (Leola, Pennsylvania) in May 2014 to study the first phase for the co-location of an Inbicon (Fredericia, Denmark) technology biomass refinery. It is unclear if development of the project will continue, now that CHS has taken possession of the site.

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