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| VeraSun juggles merger and opening of Ohio ethanol plant |
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By VICKI JOHNSON
Ohio Correspondent BLOOMINGBURG, Ohio — VeraSun Energy Corp. opened a 110 million-gallon-per-year ethanol plant last week and announced a merger with US BioEnergy.
The biorefinery, the fourth to open in Ohio, is VeraSun’s 11th plant operating in the United States and increases the company’s annual production to more than one billion gallons per year.
VeraSun stated it is expecting to start up five more facilities this year – in Welcome and Janesville, Minn.; Hartley and Dyersville, Iowa; and Hankinson, N.D. – bringing its overall production capacity to 1.64 billion gallons, which it noted makes VeraSun the largest ethanol producer in the nation.
The Bloomingburg facility is one of the three biorefineries VeraSun purchased from ASAlliances Biofuels LLC in August 2007.
Production capacity at Bloomingburg represents more than 30 percent of Ohio’s total capacity of 345 million gallons per year.
“The ethanol produced in Bloomingburg will extend our domestic fuel supply and find its way into the marketplace as a low-carbon, high-octane component,” said Don Endres, VeraSun CEO. “The community of Bloomingburg and surrounding areas of Fayette County should be commended for the role they are playing in further reducing our dependence on foreign oil.”
The plant, off State Road 238 Northeast, is expected to employ about 50 people and process 39 million bushels of corn each year.
In addition to ethanol, the plant could produce about 350,000 tons of distillers grains for livestock feed. Cargill is to provide marketing services for the facility’s ethanol and grains.
As a result of the merger, VeraSun has made changes in the company’s senior management team.
Virg Garbers and Joel West from US BioEnergy have joined VeraSun and Todd Church has been promoted to vice president.
Garbers serves as vice president and corporate controller and West is vice president of risk management. Church is vice president of operations and production support.
“We are pleased to add experienced individuals to our senior management team through the merger with US BioEnergy, in addition to leverage the skills and experience of someone like Todd Church from within the company,” said Danny Herron, VeraSun’s president and chief financial officer.
“The leadership each individual brings to the company will be extremely important as we continue to grow our company and integrate new biorefineries into our VeraSun fleet of facilities over the next few months.”
Garbers joins VeraSun with more than 15 years of experience in management and public accounting. While at US BioEnergy, he also held the position of vice president and corporate controller.
West’s responsibilities are to include overseeing ethanol price risk and grain and energy related risk positions necessary for production, in addition to the development of an overall margin management strategy for the company. He has almost 15 years of experience in managing commodity and risk positions, and was responsible for overseeing corn procurement, distillers grains marketing, transportation and management of relationships with joint venture partners for ethanol marketing while at US BioEnergy.
Church joined VeraSun in March 2007 as a plant manager. He also served in an interim oversight role of the VeraSun plant fleet during the acquisition of three biorefineries from ASAlliances and the merger with US BioEnergy. He is now responsible for overseeing operations of VeraSun’s East Region and its seven biorefineries expected to be in operation by the end of the year.
Kurt Swenson, who had served as VeraSun’s vice president of plant operations since January 2007, is now vice president of operations and engineering support and plans to oversee West Region operations and the company’s other nine facilities expected to be operating by the end of the year.
Headquartered in Brookings, S.D., VeraSun Energy was founded in 2001. It markets E85 for use in flexible-fuel vehicles to 150 retail locations in 15 states and Washington, D.C.
This farm news was published in the April 9, 2008 issue of the Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
| 4/9/2008 |
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