This company is right next door to USSE in Natchez:
Delta BioFuels signs with company to market product
By Katie Stallcup
The Natchez Democrat
NATCHEZ — Delta BioFuels has had a busy couple of weeks.
The biodiesel company officially got cranking in early May after a year of work retro-fitting the old Ethyl Petroleum Additives plant near the Natchez-Adams County Port.
Tuesday, they announced an agreement with Aventine Renewable Energy, Inc., to market the Delta BioFuels product.
The plant is currently making what averages to be 18 million gallons a year, President Clint Vegas said.
With the contract, signed with Aventine, the plant will eventually produce 80 million gallons each year, he said.
Aventine will serve as marketer for the plant’s biodiesel product, Vegas said.
“They’re going to buy everything we make,” Vegas said. “For us, what it does is provide instant logistics, which is where we were going to get strangled.”
One of the prior hold-ups was getting rail, barge and truck transportation to ship the product out, Vegas said. Now, Aventine will handle all that.
“It will allow us to ramp up our volume in ways we couldn’t otherwise do,” he said.
For Aventine, the marketing agreement is a big step, too, company biodiesel manager Kevin Lockart said Tuesday.
The company traditionally dealt with ethanol, a “green” competitor with gasoline. This contract is the first time the company has done anything with biodiesel, Lockart said.
“This is a doorway for us — it’s a great start for us,” Lockart said. “Their job is to produce biodiesel, which is what they’re best at,” he said. “We, in turn, market the product as well as move the product. We’re just real excited to be a part of it.”
One advantage of the Natchez plant, from a shipping standpoint, is the Mississippi River, Lockart said.
“Location, location, location,” he said. “The port is right there, so it’s kind of a supermarket to the world. It’s just perfect.”
Delta BioFuel receives feedstock and exports biofuel from the river and by truck and rail.
