Monday, May 04, 2009 4:17:09 PM
Green Plains Renewable Energy PR
As explained in the PR in post #102, Green Plains Renewable Energy [GPRE] is an ethanol company which formed a small joint venture to experiment with algae production. The joint venture is called BioProcessAlgae LLC. This is explained in more detail in the excerpts at the end of this post from a March 26 presentation.
The four BioProcessAlgae joint venture partners are GPRE, CLARCOR, BioprocessH2O, and NTR plc.
CLARCOR, Inc. [NYSE: CLC]
“CLARCOR is a global provider of filtration products” located in Tennessee. Q12009 sales were $214 million.
NTR plc
NTR is located in Dublin. Per their website: “NTR is an Irish public limited company. Its shares are not listed on any stock exchange, but may be traded via the company's stockbrokers.” Last October, NTR merged its North American ethanol operations with GPRE. This is how GPRE got as big as it is and why NTR is now GPRE’s biggest shareholder. “As a result of the merger, Green Plains triples its operating capacity…”
BioProcessH2O LLC
Located in Rhode Island. Develops wastewater treatment systems. Here I guess is where the “bioreactor” expertise comes from: “Our objective is to simplify wastewater treatment. Our specialty is identifying complete solutions, including Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) systems for water reuse or high-concentrate wastewater streams that can be segregated and treated at a lower cost than a facility designed to treat total flow at all times.”
Today’s GPRE PR is about the finalization of a $2.1 million grant from the Iowa Power Fund for BioProcessAlgae to build pilot bioreactor units at one of GPRE’s ethanol plants:
Green Plains Renewable Energy, Inc. and BioProcessAlgae LLC Complete $2.1 Million Grant Funding for Algae Pilot Project
OMAHA, NE--(MARKET WIRE)--May 4, 2009 10:14 AM-- Green Plains Renewable Energy, Inc. (NasdaqGM:GPRE - News) and BioProcessAlgae LLC have executed a grant award agreement with the Iowa Office of Energy Independence for a $2.1 million research and development grant from the Iowa Power Fund to build an algae pilot project at Green Plains' ethanol plant in Shenandoah, Iowa.
"Algae has the potential to become an important carbon sequestration solution, biofuel feedstock and feed product," said Todd Becker, President and Chief Executive Officer of Green Plains. "If the pilot project is successful, BioProcessAlgae will move to expand the photobioreactor system to full commercial scale. We believe that this pilot project will be one of the first operational installations of a photobioreactor system at an industrial plant in the United Sates utilizing emerging technology out of the laboratory."
The Iowa Power Fund grant provides matching funds to install a series of photobioreactor units at Green Plains' Shenandoah ethanol plant. Water, heat and carbon dioxide will be recycled from the ethanol manufacturing process to support continuous algae production. The grant provides funding through the end of the first quarter of calendar year 2010 with installation of the pilot project expected in the third quarter of 2009.
"BioProcessAlgae and its technology partners have made significant progress in the engineering, design and development of photobioreactor systems for algae production," said Kevin Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of BioProcessAlgae. "The project will give us the opportunity to test our systems on a larger scale. This is a very important step toward system commercialization of algae technology."
"The Shenandoah algae project is an opportunity to help the environment, the ethanol industry and the Iowa economy," Becker stated. "Green Plains is committed to the advancement of next generation technologies and we appreciate the vision and assistance of Iowa Governor Chet Culver and the Iowa Office of Energy Independence in the development of this project."
BioProcessAlgae LLC is a joint venture between Green Plains, NTR plc (a significant shareholder of Green Plains), CLARCOR Inc. and BioProcessH20.
About Green Plains
Green Plains Renewable Energy, Inc. is based in Omaha, Nebraska. Green Plains is a vertically-integrated, low-cost ethanol producer operating four ethanol plants in Iowa, Indiana and Tennessee with a combined expected operating capacity of 330 million gallons of ethanol per year. Green Plains also operates an independent third-party ethanol marketing service, with marketing capacity of 305 million gallons of ethanol per year. Green Plains owns 51% of Blendstar, LLC, a Houston-based biofuel terminal operator with 6 facilities in 5 states. Green Plains' Agribusiness segment operates grain storage facilities and complementary agronomy, feed, and fuel businesses. Green Plains has grain storage capacity of approximately 22 million bushels.
About BioProcessAlgae
BioProcessAlgae LLC is a joint venture between Green Plains, CLARCOR Inc. (NYSE:CLC - News), BioProcessH2O LLC and NTR plc. BioProcessAlgae was created to commercialize advanced photobioreactor technologies for continuous production of algal biomass.
EXCERPT FROM GPRE's presentation at Wall Street Analyst Forum's 20th Annual Institutional Investor Conference
March 26, 2009 9:10 am ET
The transcript is on seekingalpha:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/128076-green-plains-renewable-energy-inc-wall-street-analyst-forum-s-20th-annual-institutional-investor-conference-transcript
EARLY IN PRESENTATION:
So who is Green Plains Renewable Energy? We are a leader in ethanol production, and marketing with a combined volume of 635 million gallons per year. That represents approximately 6% of the total US ethanol demand for this year. We have 330 million gallons of production capacity, 305 million gallons of third party marketing contracts. We continue to look to build each of our pieces of the platform, or we're going to look to expand ethanol production as well as in our marketing services.
What we're trying to do is build a vertically integrated ethanol platform that ranges all the way from the farm, where we provide agronomy services, all the way through to the blender, where we provide terminal services. And we're going to walk through each of those pieces of our platform today.
LATER IN PRESENTATION:
And this is – this is our biotech – or this is our investment in next generation. We have a small investment in an algae production company that’s working on commercializing photobioreactor technology for continuous algae production. We have a 25.5% interest in that company.
As you look at our partners, it’s a pretty impressive list. It’s CLARCOR, which is the $1.6 billion New York Stock Exchange-listed company; bioprocessH2O, which is a filtration company partially owned by CLARCOR; and, NTR plc, which is our largest shareholder. The four of us got together. We funded the enterprise. We believe our technology has a lot of potential. And our goal is to roll out a pilot project at our Green Plains Shenandoah plant in spring 2009. So hopefully, by July – June, July of this year, we will have a working photobioreactor producing algae at an ethanol plant.
If you think about what – what it takes to grow algae, it takes CO2, it takes warm water, it takes waste, it takes heat, and it takes sunlight. And we have most of those things in our ethanol plant. Light, the sunshine, we’re okay. We have the CO2. Then we produce a very clean CO2 at the ethanol plant. The thing about ethanol, ethanol is actually a closed-loop process. The CO2 that we emit in the atmosphere is used to grow the corn, the corn is grown, and then we use the corn then to make ethanol. That's why it's considered closed-loop.
What we can do actually now is to capture that CO2 into the algae production process, run it through the bioreactor. We produce a lot of very clean, warm water in the process of ethanol. We have large water cleaning systems at our plants. So we produce a lot of very warm water. We run that through the algae. We produce a lot of waste heat. We run that through the production. And then with the sunlight and the technology that we think we have, we’ll be able to grow algae in large scale photobioreactors. So we’ll see how that goes.
Again, we’re not going to spend a lot of money on R&D. We are not an R&D company. We don’t plan on being an R&D company. But we do have a little bit of our money invested into this company. We received a grant from the state of Iowa for $2.3 million, which is a matching grant. So we’re fully funded through our startup phase here on our pilot project.
As explained in the PR in post #102, Green Plains Renewable Energy [GPRE] is an ethanol company which formed a small joint venture to experiment with algae production. The joint venture is called BioProcessAlgae LLC. This is explained in more detail in the excerpts at the end of this post from a March 26 presentation.
The four BioProcessAlgae joint venture partners are GPRE, CLARCOR, BioprocessH2O, and NTR plc.
CLARCOR, Inc. [NYSE: CLC]
“CLARCOR is a global provider of filtration products” located in Tennessee. Q12009 sales were $214 million.
NTR plc
NTR is located in Dublin. Per their website: “NTR is an Irish public limited company. Its shares are not listed on any stock exchange, but may be traded via the company's stockbrokers.” Last October, NTR merged its North American ethanol operations with GPRE. This is how GPRE got as big as it is and why NTR is now GPRE’s biggest shareholder. “As a result of the merger, Green Plains triples its operating capacity…”
BioProcessH2O LLC
Located in Rhode Island. Develops wastewater treatment systems. Here I guess is where the “bioreactor” expertise comes from: “Our objective is to simplify wastewater treatment. Our specialty is identifying complete solutions, including Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) systems for water reuse or high-concentrate wastewater streams that can be segregated and treated at a lower cost than a facility designed to treat total flow at all times.”
Today’s GPRE PR is about the finalization of a $2.1 million grant from the Iowa Power Fund for BioProcessAlgae to build pilot bioreactor units at one of GPRE’s ethanol plants:
Green Plains Renewable Energy, Inc. and BioProcessAlgae LLC Complete $2.1 Million Grant Funding for Algae Pilot Project
OMAHA, NE--(MARKET WIRE)--May 4, 2009 10:14 AM-- Green Plains Renewable Energy, Inc. (NasdaqGM:GPRE - News) and BioProcessAlgae LLC have executed a grant award agreement with the Iowa Office of Energy Independence for a $2.1 million research and development grant from the Iowa Power Fund to build an algae pilot project at Green Plains' ethanol plant in Shenandoah, Iowa.
"Algae has the potential to become an important carbon sequestration solution, biofuel feedstock and feed product," said Todd Becker, President and Chief Executive Officer of Green Plains. "If the pilot project is successful, BioProcessAlgae will move to expand the photobioreactor system to full commercial scale. We believe that this pilot project will be one of the first operational installations of a photobioreactor system at an industrial plant in the United Sates utilizing emerging technology out of the laboratory."
The Iowa Power Fund grant provides matching funds to install a series of photobioreactor units at Green Plains' Shenandoah ethanol plant. Water, heat and carbon dioxide will be recycled from the ethanol manufacturing process to support continuous algae production. The grant provides funding through the end of the first quarter of calendar year 2010 with installation of the pilot project expected in the third quarter of 2009.
"BioProcessAlgae and its technology partners have made significant progress in the engineering, design and development of photobioreactor systems for algae production," said Kevin Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of BioProcessAlgae. "The project will give us the opportunity to test our systems on a larger scale. This is a very important step toward system commercialization of algae technology."
"The Shenandoah algae project is an opportunity to help the environment, the ethanol industry and the Iowa economy," Becker stated. "Green Plains is committed to the advancement of next generation technologies and we appreciate the vision and assistance of Iowa Governor Chet Culver and the Iowa Office of Energy Independence in the development of this project."
BioProcessAlgae LLC is a joint venture between Green Plains, NTR plc (a significant shareholder of Green Plains), CLARCOR Inc. and BioProcessH20.
About Green Plains
Green Plains Renewable Energy, Inc. is based in Omaha, Nebraska. Green Plains is a vertically-integrated, low-cost ethanol producer operating four ethanol plants in Iowa, Indiana and Tennessee with a combined expected operating capacity of 330 million gallons of ethanol per year. Green Plains also operates an independent third-party ethanol marketing service, with marketing capacity of 305 million gallons of ethanol per year. Green Plains owns 51% of Blendstar, LLC, a Houston-based biofuel terminal operator with 6 facilities in 5 states. Green Plains' Agribusiness segment operates grain storage facilities and complementary agronomy, feed, and fuel businesses. Green Plains has grain storage capacity of approximately 22 million bushels.
About BioProcessAlgae
BioProcessAlgae LLC is a joint venture between Green Plains, CLARCOR Inc. (NYSE:CLC - News), BioProcessH2O LLC and NTR plc. BioProcessAlgae was created to commercialize advanced photobioreactor technologies for continuous production of algal biomass.
EXCERPT FROM GPRE's presentation at Wall Street Analyst Forum's 20th Annual Institutional Investor Conference
March 26, 2009 9:10 am ET
The transcript is on seekingalpha:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/128076-green-plains-renewable-energy-inc-wall-street-analyst-forum-s-20th-annual-institutional-investor-conference-transcript
EARLY IN PRESENTATION:
So who is Green Plains Renewable Energy? We are a leader in ethanol production, and marketing with a combined volume of 635 million gallons per year. That represents approximately 6% of the total US ethanol demand for this year. We have 330 million gallons of production capacity, 305 million gallons of third party marketing contracts. We continue to look to build each of our pieces of the platform, or we're going to look to expand ethanol production as well as in our marketing services.
What we're trying to do is build a vertically integrated ethanol platform that ranges all the way from the farm, where we provide agronomy services, all the way through to the blender, where we provide terminal services. And we're going to walk through each of those pieces of our platform today.
LATER IN PRESENTATION:
And this is – this is our biotech – or this is our investment in next generation. We have a small investment in an algae production company that’s working on commercializing photobioreactor technology for continuous algae production. We have a 25.5% interest in that company.
As you look at our partners, it’s a pretty impressive list. It’s CLARCOR, which is the $1.6 billion New York Stock Exchange-listed company; bioprocessH2O, which is a filtration company partially owned by CLARCOR; and, NTR plc, which is our largest shareholder. The four of us got together. We funded the enterprise. We believe our technology has a lot of potential. And our goal is to roll out a pilot project at our Green Plains Shenandoah plant in spring 2009. So hopefully, by July – June, July of this year, we will have a working photobioreactor producing algae at an ethanol plant.
If you think about what – what it takes to grow algae, it takes CO2, it takes warm water, it takes waste, it takes heat, and it takes sunlight. And we have most of those things in our ethanol plant. Light, the sunshine, we’re okay. We have the CO2. Then we produce a very clean CO2 at the ethanol plant. The thing about ethanol, ethanol is actually a closed-loop process. The CO2 that we emit in the atmosphere is used to grow the corn, the corn is grown, and then we use the corn then to make ethanol. That's why it's considered closed-loop.
What we can do actually now is to capture that CO2 into the algae production process, run it through the bioreactor. We produce a lot of very clean, warm water in the process of ethanol. We have large water cleaning systems at our plants. So we produce a lot of very warm water. We run that through the algae. We produce a lot of waste heat. We run that through the production. And then with the sunlight and the technology that we think we have, we’ll be able to grow algae in large scale photobioreactors. So we’ll see how that goes.
Again, we’re not going to spend a lot of money on R&D. We are not an R&D company. We don’t plan on being an R&D company. But we do have a little bit of our money invested into this company. We received a grant from the state of Iowa for $2.3 million, which is a matching grant. So we’re fully funded through our startup phase here on our pilot project.
Join the InvestorsHub Community
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
