VeraSun Continues Push to Stay Atop the Ranks of Major U.S. Ethanol Players

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The nation's second-largest ethanol producer VeraSun Energy Corporation (NYSE:VSE) (Brookings, South Dakota) is continuing its push forward to become a major player in the U.S. fuel ethanol market. The company already has 450 million gallons of production online at plants in Aurora, South Dakota; Fort Dodge and Charles City, Iowa; and Linden, Indiana. Its fifth plant, a 110 million-gallon plant in Albion, Nebraska, is nearing completion and is expected to be producing fuel ethanol by December 2007.

The Albion plant began construction in January 2006 under then-developer ASAAliances Biofuels (Dallas, Texas) and is being built by Fagen Incorporated (Granite Falls, Minnesota), utilizing ICM's (Colwich, Kansas) licensed process technology. When the acquisition was made with the company back in August 2007, VeraSun also acquired ASA projects developing in Bloomberg, Ohio, and the now-operational Linden, Indiana, project.

Additional plants, each with 110 million gallons of capacity, are under construction for the company. One in Hartley, Iowa, is expected to be online by February 2008; another plant in Bloomberg, Ohio, is expected to be online by March 2008, and a plant in Welcome, Minnesota, is expected to wrap up construction sometime in late first quarter of 2008.

The company had started some preliminary dirt work and road construction on a plant in Reynolds, Indiana, but decided to suspend construction of the project until more favorable market conditions to build new ethanol plants hopefully arrive in 2008.

VeraSun's entrance into the biodiesel market has been canceled after the company's exploration of the possibilities of building a 30 million-gallon plant in Aurora, Illinois, was called off.

Corn oil could be the next market VeraSun is looking at getting into as producers are looking to squeeze every amount of energy they can from a kernel of corn. A corn-oil-extraction system is expected to be installed at three of the company's plants that will extract corn oil from distillers grains. The extracted corn oil can be used as feedstock for biodiesel production and leaves a distillers grain behind that is better suited to feed hogs and chickens.

After all the additional plants are built, VeraSun expects to have the capacity of producing more than 1 billion gallons of fuel ethanol annually to rank the company in the top three in domestic production capacity by the end of 2008.

Industrial Info's Ethanol Database provides a comprehensive outline of all current development activities in the emerging alternative fuels market. This database covers 123 ethanol plants in operation and 290 plants under development. It also covers 32 operational biodiesel plants and 75 biodiesel plants under development.

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