Evansville likely to get biodiesel facility
Published Thursday, August 10, 2006

By Gina Duwe
Gazette Staff

EVANSVILLE-Indications are piling up that Evansville will be the site of North Prairie Production's $42 million biodiesel facility.

The company is negotiating with Landmark Services Cooperative and is expected to make an announcement in coming weeks.

Consider this:

-- North Prairie and Landmark sent invitations this week to Evansville residents inviting them to a neighborhood open house "to learn more about the benefits of biodiesel fuel and the proposed biodiesel facility in Evansville."

-- The city council Tuesday gave the city's financial advisers at Ehlers & Associates the go-ahead to begin paperwork for a preliminary tax increment financing district at the proposed biodiesel site.

-- A feasibility study released this week by the Wisconsin Soybean Marketing Board cites Evansville as a top location for the state's first soybean crushing facility, which would have a significant advantage if co-located with a biodiesel plant.

-- North Prairie officials have said, and continue to say, that even though there's no ink on paper, there's no reason to believe Evansville won't be the site.

The open house, from 1 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 23, at Evansville High School, 640 S. 5th St., is meant "to discuss biodiesel and the prospect of North Prairie Productions being located in Evansville," company Vice President Jeff Pieterick said.

Until a deal is finalized, however, he said he can't confirm if that means the plant will definitely be in Evansville.

"I just think it's great that they're having community involvement and trying to get all the information out there to them," Mayor Sandy Decker said.

The site is east of Evansville-south of Highway 14 and east of County M-and would have to be annexed from Union Township, Decker said. The city already designates the land for industrial development.

North Prairie and Landmark officials expressed interest in partial funding of the plant through a TIF district when they presented preliminary plans to city leaders in June.

"Should that (announcement) come forward, we've taken the first step," Decker said.

The contract with Ehlers to establish a TIF district would be divided into four phases, and the city could back out of the contract at the end of each phase, she said.

The Wisconsin Soybean Marketing Board study shows Wisconsin grows enough soybeans to support an 80,000-bushel-per-day, or 26.4-million-bushel-per-year, soybean crush facility.

A soybean plant that size would employ 35 people and produce nearly 580,000 tons of soybean meal and 45 million gallons of soybean oil annually.

That's encouraging news for North Prairie, which was basing much of its site selection on the results of the feasibility study, Pieterick said.

"As we look to build the biodiesel plant, we're looking to find ourselves co-located where ever that soybean plant may be," he said.

A crushing facility extracts the oil from the beans. The oil is then processed into biodiesel at a biodiesel production facility. Co-locating the facilities would eliminate transportation costs of the oil.

The report says five stand-alone biodiesel plants planned or in place in southern Wisconsin have enough capacity to use twice the amount of soybean oil that would be produced by such a crush plant.

A crush facility site must have good access to truck and rail transportation, the study says. Co-location with North Prairie Productions would meet this requirement, the study says, and lists other locations including Madison, Janesville, Stoughton and Edgerton.

"A soybean processing facility in Wisconsin is going to be huge for the biofuels industry," Pieterick said.

The report shows there's room for only one major commercial soybean processing facility in the state, Pieterick said.

"So we're certainly hoping that we can find the circumstances where we're going to be situated next door to the facility," he said.