Evansville may get soybean crushing plant
Published Thursday, August 18, 2006

By Gina Duwe
Gazette Staff

EVANSVILLE-The good news keeps coming.

A day after confirmation that Evansville will be getting a biodiesel plant, the city learned there's a good chance the state's first soybean crushing facility will be built next door on the city's east side.

Landmark Services Cooperative announced Thursday it will take the lead in building the soybean crushing plant by starting a feasibility study site-specific to Evansville, CEO Larry Swalheim said.

Bob Karls, executive director of Wisconsin Soybean Programs, next week will begin a studying for Landmark the feasibility of an 80,000-bushel-a-day crushing plant at Landmark's rail site on County M. The study is expected to take 20 days.

A plant of that size would employ about 40 people.

"If our additional research shows a good return on investment and that it will help our local farmers, then we hopefully would be a catalyst and move to the next step," Swalheim said.

North Prairie Productions announced Wednesday it will buy about 15 acres from Landmark to build a $45 million biodiesel plant.

The companies announced their plans to more than 50 business people at a Chamber of Commerce meeting Thursday morning at the co-op.

"It was an outstanding turnout. You could just feel the excitement in the air," Swalheim said.

Landmark's announcement comes a week after the Wisconsin Soybean Marketing Board released its study saying Wisconsin could support a soybean crushing facility. The study named Evansville as a top site, along with co-location of North Prairie's biodiesel plant.

Landmark's study is simply the next step in seeing if all the pieces can make the puzzle work in Evansville, Swalheim said.

"We are not going to rush into anything," he said.

Wisconsin is the only state among the top 13 soybean-producing states that does not have a soybean crushing plant, meaning virtually all soybean production leaves the state.

Last year, Wisconsin produced a record 65.5 million bushels of soybeans.

Rock County came in as the second highest producer with just more than 4 million bushels. Dane County took the top spot with 4.17 million bushels.

The crushing facility Landmark is looking to build would process 26.4 million bushels a year.

To put that in perspective, if all of Rock County's soybeans were processed at the proposed crushing facility in Evansville, they would take up only about 15 percent of the plant's capacity.

Soybeans from the south-central region of the state, which produces the most soybeans, would account for 70 percent of the crushing facility's production.

A plant that size is estimated at about $75 million in capital investments, the soybean board's study found.

With that price tag, more information about the return on investment specific to a site on the railroad in Evansville is needed, Swalheim said.

"We would need to continue the feasibility study and write a specific business plan before we would go any farther with a crushing plant," he said. "When we're all done (with the study), and if it says we shouldn't go any farther, we can say we looked at it, and we won't continue."

The crushing facility's impact would be "pretty dramatic," said Bud Gayhart, director of the Small Business Development Center at UW-Whitewater.

With rising fuel costs, companies are burning diesel fuel just to get the raw materials to production facilities, he said.

North Prairie still would have to buy soybean oil produced at the crushing facility, but instead of trucking in the oil from out of state it could be pumped in through a pipe from the crushing plant next door, Swalheim said.

"Having that crush facility close by would allow us to minimize a lot of that adventure," Gayhart said.

Copyright ©2006 Bliss Communications Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted here with permission.