Lincolnland Agri-Energy Starts Construction on First New Ethanol Plant in 2003

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Lincolnland Agri-Energy LLC (Robinson, Illinois), a farmer-owned ethanol cooperative that was formed to build an ethanol plant in Crawford county Illinois, and has kicked off the New Year by being the first company to begin construction of a fuel ethanol plant in the U.S.

Last year the cooperative raised over $13.4 million in equity by selling 8.9 million shares of Class A stock to its 496 members and is moving forward with the $53.7 million ethanol project.

Site preparation and grading are underway in Robinson, Illinois under the direction of leading ethanol plant designer/builder Fagen Incorporated (Granite Falls, Minnesota), who will perform the construction work utilizing a turnkey construction strategy. Completion of the project is expected in fifteen months.

The 40 million gallon per year dry mill ethanol plant will utilize about 15 million bushels of corn annually and also produce some 138,000 tons per year of Distillers Dried Grain (DDGS) and Carbon Dioxide (C02), both by-products of ethanol production.

Lincolnland Agri-Energy is a new generation cooperative consisting of 496 members from 22 Illinois counties and 8 different states. Once the plant becomes operational in April 2004, the facility is expected to increase the price of corn by 5 to 8 cents per bushel for producers operating within a 50-mile radius of Crawford County. This value-added cooperative is expected to add $3-5 million dollars to local farm incomes, which from 1997-1999 averaged only $21,500 annually.