Evansville Courier & Press
Walter Sieckman, Chief Executive Officer of International Steel Services Inc., announced today that ISSI's wholly owned subsidiary, Biofuels International, Inc., has acquired an option on a site in Spencer County, Ind., for its planned $180 million ethanol production facility.
Permitting for the site was filed earlier with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the company said. The company said Biofuels' design includes advanced and environmentally friendly, closed-loop ethanol technologies. The plant will be designed for expansion up to 200 million gallons from its present design capacity of 100 million gallons of ethanol per year. Its initial operating phase, scheduled for groundbreaking near Rockport, Indiana this summer, will achieve full operating capacity within 24 months.
Lincolnland Economic Development Corp., Spencer County's economic development organization, recruited the Biofuels project in response to the county's strategic development plan for value-added agricultural processes.
Lincolnland director Tom Utter said: "In seeking the biofuels opportunities, I approached international companies with existing locations in our county. Mr. Sieckman's organization has successfully operated its existing $25 million AMROX plant here for over eight years. In addition to projects in the United States, Mr. Sieckman's global team is also constructing and operating projects in Argentina, China, Russia, India and Korea, so it is an honor that they think enough of Spencer County to accept our invitation to build an alternative fuels plant in our community."
Providing technology and engineering services in the fields of energy management, waste water and air pollution control, ISSI specializes in the design, construction and operation of hydrochloric acid processing facilities producing high-purity iron oxide. As both an owner and operator of acid regeneration plants, ISSI is the largest marketer of iron oxide in the world.