LINDEN — Cargill isn’t expanding to produce ethanol — an environmentally safe renewable energy source. But, Demeter Enterprises, LLC is coming to Linden to work with the company.
Demeter Enterprises will focus on the ethanol processing, Cargill farm service group manager Peter Schram said.
“This is not a Cargill entity. It’s going to be collocated,” Cargill’s David Feider said over the phone from his public relations office in Minneapolis.
The Linden plant will create an estimated 60 full-time jobs and should be finished at the end of 2006 or beginning of 2007.
AS Alliances Holdings, LLC, a merchant banking investment firm that focuses solely on the development of renewable energy products, and Fagan Inc., which designs and builds ethanol plants, will play key roles in the project.
AS Alliances will accommodate project development, finance, capital markets, executive management and corporate development expertise. Fagen will offer design, engineering and construction expertise
Cargill, located on County Road 1100N, will play an essential role — supplying corn origination, energy and corn risk-management services, transportation logistics expertise and the marketing of the ethanol and dry distillers grain products. (DDG is the process’s byproduct and is used to feed livestock.)
“We have solid backing for this enterprise, having pulled together some of the largest, most respected companies in the ethanol and agribusiness industries,” AS Alliances Holdings Chairman Steve Durham said.
The plant will be capable of producing an annual yield of 100 million gallons of ethanol and 315,000 tons of DDG and is one of three Demeter announced Wednesday. The other plants are to be built at Albion, Neb., and Bloomingburg, Ohio.
Cargill will host a community meeting in the next few weeks to answer questions and give information about Demeter and Cargill, Schram said.
The announcement was hardly a surprise. Montgomery County Economic Development Director Bill Henderson said he knew the plant was a possibility about six months ago. He is pleased with the recent announcement as it will bring “good paying, high-tech jobs.”
Crawfordsville/Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Dave Long said that acquiring the ethanol plant and Polyglot Press “sends a good message to other interested parties ... looking to locate here that something must be worth investigating.”
On Tuesday, Gov. Mitch Daniels used Polyglot Press as an example to explain how big companies can succeed in smaller communities to Journal Review staff. All it takes is a strong workforce, not a big city, he said.
Daniels visited Crawfordsville after attending the groundbreaking ceremony of Putnam Ethanol LLC’s new corn refinery/ethanol plant.
“The plant will provide another outlet for Indiana farmers to sell corn for the manufacturing of value added agricultural products,” Midland Impact CEO Kevin Still said. “Today, the production of ethanol is helping to decrease our reliance on foreign energy supplies and helps to improve the environment.”
© 2005 The Journal Review