Biofuels plant back on track in Fulton
By ROGER MEISSEN
The Fulton Sun

4-10-08

Soon millions of gallons of fuel will flow from a new biofuels plant in Fulton.

Central Missouri Energy, LLC, will break ground on their new plant soon after more than a year's wait from its first announcement of the project.

Bruce Hackman, president of the Fulton Area Development Corporation, said he's glad to hear that progress is going to be made.

“It's really good news for us because that this project is back on track,” Hackman said. “It was delayed because with feedstock prices so high it left them looking for an alternative feed source for the biodiesel. Now that it's back on course and we're anxious to see him get construction underway.”

In the time between its first announcement and now the plant has grown.

“The project went from a small plant in Fulton to kind of an international arrangement so there were a lot of things that got introduced as extra things to do,” said Boyd Ware, president of Central Missouri Energy.

Ware said the project went through these changes to try to secure a sustainable and profitable crop to supply the oil for the plant. Eventually, the company settled on a joint venture with two companies out of Mexico on a different type of plant.

“A large precentage of biodiesel plants use soybean oil and soybean prices have skyrocketed,” he said. “Consequently, the price of soybean oil has gone sky high. We had never intended on using soybean oil, but the feedstock we were going to use - predominantly number two yellow grease or second use grease from restaurants - now became more in short supply and the cost on it escalated also.”

They settled on jatropha, a bean-producing plant raised in Mexico. Jatropha is a plant that produces beans that aren't edible to humans. As a result, its oil costs less and doesn't have to compete with markets for human and animal consumption like corn and soybeans.

“The last thing I want to do is get a plant built and not have the feedstock to run it,” Ware said. “That happened to a lot of plants last fall. There are a lot of plants sitting idle in the U.S. right now, because when you're looking at $12-$15 per bushel soybeans you can't do it.”

His solution was a cooperative between Green Oil Corporation and Jatropha Corporation out of Mexico. The two companies will grow and process the plant into oil to be shipped to Fulton.

“It's a plant, like a bush,” Boyd said. “They will be crushing it and extracting it in Mexico and then shipping it to us. It cannot deal well with frost, but it can grow in poor soils and doesn't need a lot of rain to sustain the crop. After it's planted it can grow for 50 years and you don't have to go back and plant year after year.”

“It's toxic to both animals and humans, and by toxic I mean it will give you diarrhea. But the good side of that is we're not growing a crop that's in competition for animal or human feed like soybeans or corn.”

The company will get the oil free of charge in the agreement and will split profits with its Mexican partners with 55 percent of profits going to the other players.

Ware said getting the oil from Mexico has some upsides. First, it will cost the company about half as much to purchase it and ship it to Fulton as soybean oil. He said there's not much difference in getting a feedstock from Mexico.

“The only difference between here and Mexico is a river,” Ware said. “The other thing is there's a tremendous amount of political pressure with the immigration problem to the United States from Mexico, so that if you're creating jobs for them in Mexico that will keep them there. It definitely relieves pressure on the border.”

Originally the plant planned to use number two yellow grease and oil collected from restaurants, but this alternative is cheaper and sustainable.

“The seeds from a jatropha plant have about three times as much oil as soybeans have,” Hackman said. “They're hoping to break ground this spring.”

The project will create 25 full-time jobs in Fulton and production is expected to double by its second year.

http://www.fultonsun.com/articles/20...