POET Begins Filling Corn Bins at New Ohio Plant in Anticipation of January '08 Start-up

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)-- Investor-owned POET Biorefining-Leipsic (Leipsic, Ohio), a subsidiary of POET LLC (Sioux Falls, South Dakota), has begun buying corn, and storage bins are filling quickly in anticipation of starting up ethanol production at its new plant in Leipsic. The plant has on-site storage for about 1.4 million bushels of corn and will require some 55,000 bushels of corn per day to run at full capacity.

Construction has been underway since November 2006 on the plant, which was called Summit Ethanol LLC at the time, and it will have a nameplate capacity of 60 million gallons per year and process more than 21 million bushels of corn annually into the renewable fuel and distillers grains. Company officials estimate that the 1.4 million bushels of storage translates into about 22 days worth of feedstock supply.

The company's construction arm, POET Design & Construction, is putting the finishing touches on production equipment and testing systems, expecting to officially start up plant operations in January 2008.

Construction costs to build the plant are in the $200 million range.

POET has been growing fast, and the company now has the capacity to produce more than 1.1 billion gallons of ethanol annually with 21 operational plants in the U.S. It also recently completed a 76,000-square-foot expansion at its company headquarters in Sioux Falls. Additional plants the company has under construction are in Alexandria, Portland and North Manchester, Indiana, as well as two locations in Ohio in Fostoria and Marion.

Industrial Info's Ethanol Database provides a comprehensive outline of all current development activities in the emerging alternative fuels market. This database covers 124 ethanol plants in operation and 504 plants under development. It also covers 68 operational biodiesel plants and 205 biodiesel plants under development.

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