Worldwide Ethanol Producer Eyes Midwest

The planned sale of the Abengoa Bioenergy Portales, New Mexico, ethanol facility is part of the company's strategy for future growth through development of Midwestern facilities. The company's newest 88-million-gallons-per-year (mgpy) facility in Ravenna, Nebraska, completed construction and

started full-scale operations last month, about the same time that Abengoa Bioenergy announced completion of financing for two new facilities that will replicate the Ravenna plant's design and capacity. Design and construction work will be started on the first of these new facilities (a plant in West Franklin, Indiana) almost immediately, with the second facility starting just a few months later. The second facility will be located at one of two sites — either Colwich, Kansas, or Madison, Illinois, depending on which project best presents itself at that time.

These new facilities are in addition to the biomass project announced last month to be constructed in Hugoton, Kansas. This facility, developed with the support of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), will produce approximately 13 million gallons of ethanol annually from a daily input of 930 tons of cellulosic crop residue collected from such plants as switch grass, corn stover, milo, and wheat straw, and will also produce an additional 88 mgpy of ethanol using traditional cereal-grain processes. Upon completion of these new facilities, Abengoa Bioenergy will increase its role as one of the leading U.S. and international producers of ethanol, with seven plants producing approximately 540 million gallons of ethanol per year in the United States. Abengoa Bioenergy is a St. Louis-based division of Abengoa, S.A., a technology company listed on the Madrid Stock Exchange that has a presence in more than 70 countries where it operates with its five business units: Solar, Bioenergy, Environmental Services, Information Technologies, and Industrial Engineering and Construction.