Farmer Co-op's Ethanol Dreams Becoming Reality

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Inc.; Houston, Texas). A year and a half ago, a group of farmers in Iowa formed a cooperative named Northeast Iowa Grain Processors Coop (NIGPC) (Manchester, Iowa) for the purpose of building, owning, and operating an ethanol plant and today, those dreams are becoming reality.

Site work began in November in the small town of Earlville, Iowa on a $20 million, 15 million gallon per year ethanol plant that will convert some 5.6 million bushels of corn feedstock into fuel grade ethanol to be sold for blending with gasoline as an octane enhancer. Approximately 96,000 tons of wet and dry distillers grain will be produced annually as feed additives as well as 51,000 tons of corn syrup.

Weather permitting, NIGPC plans to have the plant up and running by January of 2003. Gaylor Engineering (Dunedin, Flor.) is providing the technology and design specifications for the project and North Central Construction will act as the general contractor.

NIGPC has also formed a marketing partnership with Williams Bio-Energy LLC (Pekin, Ill.) and will utilize the company's distribution and marketing systems to reach markets as far away as California in anticipation of large ethanol market opportunities in the area.

The Earlville plant will be located roughly 30 miles west of Dubuque, Iowa off of Highway 20 in the heart of Northeast Iowa's corn growing region. The plant will be 100% owned and operated by NIGPC.

In addition to the 15 million gallons per year of ethanol to be produced by NIGPC, Industrialinfo.com is tracking over 1.9 billion gallons of ethanol capacity currently under development and scheduled to come on line between now and 2005. This also represents over $3.7 billion in capital spending.