As promised in the last post, the speeches from the grand opening ceremony of POET Biorefining - Alexandria have been posted to POET TV. You can also watch them here:
In addition, Jeff Swiatek of the Indianapolis Star wrote a story about our company and the opening of the plant. It's worth the read.
Next week, POET will open its 23rd ethanol production facility in Alexandria, Ind. The facility will be the second plant opened in the state of Indiana where one more is under construction. The grand opening is scheduled for April 17 and complete details can be found in a release on our web site.
Hoosier Ag Today interviewed Dave Hudak, the general manager of the facility, and posted it on their web site. You can also listen to the interview here:
Around 12 months ago, construction started on an expansion of POET Biorefining - Chancellor that would see its ethanol production capacity double to 100 million gallons per year. The expansion was completed last week and it took the plant less than 24 hours to reach its new nameplate capacity.
Construction on a solid waste fuel boiler (pictured here) continues at the site and is expected to be completed in the third quarter of this year. Once it is done, the solid waste fuel boiler will replace up to 60 percent of the plant's natural gas usage. For more information on the boiler, see this post announcing the project last year.
The next POET plant to come online will be POET Biorefining - Alexandria (Ind.). It will start producing ethanol early next quarter. They received their first test load of grain yesterday and the system ran smoothly. Full grain receiving will begin in March when they begin collecting enough grain to produce 65 million gallons of ethanol per year.
Dave Lawler of Lawler Trucking drives the first load of corn into the grains receiving area of the plant.
The first load of corn emptying out of the truck and into the plant.
From L to R: POET Biorefining - Alexandria Commodity Assistant Mike McCarty and Commodity Supervisor Dean Thurston, Yorkton farmer Dale Rinker whose load of corn was the first into the facility, and POET Biorefining - Alexandria Commodity Assistant Jaime Yanez.
I went to Chancellor yesterday to see how the expansion of POET Biorefining - Chancellor is coming. The production facility in Chancellor was completed in 2003 with a production capacity of 40 million gallon per year. Ground was broken on the expansion in March and as you can see, construction is progressing quite nicely.
As of now, the expansion, which will increase the production capacity to 100 million gallons per year, is slated for completion in the second quarter of 2008. For more pictures of the plant, visit our Flickr page.
The city of
Chancellor has a population of just over 300 people, so an ethanol plant that employs 50 people plays a huge role in the local economy. As just one example, I joined General Manager Rick Serie for lunch at the Chancellor Cafe. As you can see from the photo, the cafe is a fairly new building. It opened in 2002 when the plant was originally under construction. The homemade pie is worth the trip alone.
Last week, we received a fantastic reception from the Hoosier state during the grand opening event for our newest plant in Portland, Ind. We are glad to be there and the community is genuinely glad to have us.
Several comments from the area found their way into media reports from the Friday event. An article in the Muncie Star-Press quoted several people in the area:
"This is great," Jay County resident Ralph May said while enjoying the festivities. "This is one of the best things that has happened to our city and our state in a long time. We've got something good going here."
Robert Durbin, a retired electrician from Decatur, agreed. "It's amazing that they can take a product we grow and turn it into a useful resource and not destroy our atmosphere, not discharge anything into the air or into the streams," he said. "I'm glad they are able to do this."
Jim Bob McEwen, a Jay County farmer, said not only is the new facility great for the community and the state, "I think people who were against it in the beginning will be more welcoming as they realize it's environmentally friendly and not near as bad as they feared."
Senator Richard Lugar spoke at the event and has some great things to say about the plant and the ethanol industry as a whole. Gary Truitt at Hoosier Ag Today spoke to Senator Lugar and posted the interview here. Gary also posted an interview with Jeff Broin.
The Bluffton News-Banner interviewed POET Biorefining - Portland's maintenance manager Jeff Maddox of Montpelier, who said: I never expected the goose that laid the golden egg to land in my lap at my age.
In one week, POET Biorefining - Portland will hold a grand opening ceremony to celebrate the beginning of operations at their facility. When added to existing ethanol production capacity, Portland will put POET at more than 1.1 billion gallons annually. For a photo, click here.
With a new facility comes a new general manager to the POET family. This post contains an interview with Greg Noble, the general manager of POET Biorefining - Portland.
In the interview, Greg talks about one of the unique features of the facility, which is located next to a quarry. Up until now, that quarry pumped out water in order to continue its excavation activities and discharged it into a local stream. Now, that water will be diverted to POET and fulfill 100 percent of the production facility's water needs. In order to accommodate the quarry water, POET constructed a 10 million gallon retention pond (pictured here in the foreground) that stores the water so the sediment can settle out before it is utilized in the plant. By using water that was previously discharge, POET Biorefining - Portland leaves more water for other commercial and residential uses in the community.
Here's the interview with Greg Noble:
POET Biorefining - Big Stone recently completed an expansion that took the facility from an annual nameplate construction capacity of 40 million to 75 million gallons of ethanol per year. The facility had been producing nearly 50 million gallons per year, or almost 20 percent above its nameplate capacity.
The expansion of Big Stone puts the total annual production capacity of the 20 POET Biorefining plants at 1.045 billion gallons of ethanol per year. The six plants in South Dakota produce just over 310 million gallons per year.
What makes POET Biorefining - Big Stone particularly interesting is the subject of an article in the July issue of Ethanol Producer Magazine. The POET facility is located a half mile from the Big Stone Power Plant (pictured here) and uses steam from that plant to operate its evaporators and distillers. That leads to a 50 percent decrease in natural gas usage in comparison to similar ethanol plants. POET Biorefining - Big Stone also gets 85 percent of its water from the power plant's retention ponds.
With natural gas usage 50 percent below the norm and only 15 percent of its water coming from an area township, what you have is a big facility with a small environmental footprint.
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