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Ethanol plant opening nears
Published 12:00pm Thursday, March 6, 2008With a part of it already up and running, Otter Tail Ag Enterprises is approaching 100 percent operational.
“We will be 100 percent in March,” said Gunner Greene, plant manager. “We’re fairly close to setting a date. Things change from day to day.”
The plant isn’t typical, Greene said, in that it is a modular start-up.
“There are several sections that go on line at different times.”
The boilers, for example, started up a couple of days ago.
A full slate of 32 employees started working Jan. 7 and are presently in the training stage, Greene said.
Located west of Fergus Falls on State Highway 210 and 1.5 miles north on County Road 116, when fully operational, about 57,000 bushels of corn will be processed a day, making about 157,000 gallons of ethanol. It is anticipated the plant will generate $110 million annually in the community.
When ground was broken for the ethanol plant in October 2006, the goal was to be producing ethanol in the first quarter of 2008, with March later specified.
Nothing, Greene said, has put a kink in the timeline — not even the November wind storm that damaged a one-million gallon storage tank under construction.
“It’s gone pretty smoothly,” he said.
