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Lamberton ethanol plant is ready to go Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Agri News staff writer
LAMBERTON, Minn. -- A new ethanol plant in Lamberton Township is completing construction and preparing to begin operations.
Highwater Ethanol LLC is located just west of Lamberton on U.S. Highway 14. It will process approximately 18 million bushels of corn each year in its dry-mill plant to produce 50 million gallons of ethanol.
Brian Kletscher, Highwater CEO and general manager, said last week he expected Fagen, Inc., the main construction company on the project, to be substantially done with their work by June 19. The plant is expected to be fully operational by the beginning or mid-July.
For now, equipment is being tested and the plant's 37 staff members have gone through more than a month of training.
Highwater Ethanol will buy all of its corn from Meadowland Farmers Coop, which is based in Lamberton and has 14 other locations in southwest Minnesota. The coop has about 3,500 members, said Meadowland's general manager John Valentin.
As a byproduct of the ethanol-making process, the plant will create approximately 160,000 tons of distillers grains each year that will be sold for animal feed. Up to 30 percent will be a modified wet-cake.
"We believe with the cattle producers and that it's a good product, we hope to move quite a bit of that," Kletscher said.
The rest will be dried distillers grains with solubles. All of the facility's distillers grains will be handled by CHS, Inc.
The plant, on a 125-acre site, will run 375 days a year, 24-hours a day except for routine maintenance stops.
It is being built with new technology for ethanol facilities from ICM, which allow it to have a faster fermenting process and use less water.
"What we're trying to do is limit our discharge," Kletscher said of their water usage. "We're hoping to be at zero discharge. We'll be re-using all the water we possibly can."
The grain receiving area has a dust collection system and an area off the boiler system has sound barriers to control noise levels.
With a payroll of a little more than $2 million, the plant will have an important impact to the region, Kletscher said.
"With the corn usage, the economic growth, stabilizing jobs...It's very important," he said.
Building an ethanol plant during the rise in corn and energy prices last year didn't deter Kletscher from being certain the ethanol industry is here to stay.
"I think what everybody has to remember is ethanol is a very viable industry...As I look across the board, every industry is struggling right now. If everybody remains focused on the big picture and understands we have a renewable fuel and treats it as such, everything will work out."
The original concept for the facility was formed in October, 2005. The plant was announced to the public in June 2006 and dirt work started in November 2007.
For more information, visit www.highwaterethanol.com.
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