million gpy plant. Upon exploring the competing technologies and price/unit of output, we decided to go with the 45 gpy plant because that was not only the upper limit of engineered technology, but also resulted in the best output to capital input ratio. MM - how much money was in-


vested? For the plant and the storage


facility, with the additional equip- ment to allow processing virtually any feedstock, the cost was close to $76 million. The rail load out facility


and some rail modifications were in addition to that amount. MM - your vision to invest in a bio


diesel plant was quite revolution- ary at the time, can you describe some of the hurdles you had to overcome in order to establish the then largest bio diesel plant in the country? As mentioned, we did not set


out to be in the biodiesel business. Once we understood the potential, we substantially expanded our busi- ness plan. As we sought outside investors, we encountered a good


deal of reluctance on the viability of the product and our ability to mar- ket the product. There was, at the time, a great deal of misunderstand- ing about biodiesel fuel relative to ethanol. Many potential investors equated the two products and the logistics that pertained to moving feedstock and finished product. The contemporary belief was that manufacturing plants should be close to the source of the feedstock, so in other words, close to where soybeans are grown. This was not as much of an issue for biodiesel as


Photo: www.alternativelatininvestor.com 17


May 2014


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