In the US, Kansas city-based Spectrum Business Ventures has acquired an ethanol production plant in Mead, Nebraska.
The plant was formerly owned by E3 Biofuels – Mead but Spectrum purchased the company’s assets out of bankruptcy.
The $90 million (€67.9 million) facility, called the Genesis Complex, was launched back in 2007, however full-time operations failed to commence after E3 Biofuels was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following a boiler explosion and repair problems.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, however the CEO of Spectrum Amit Raizada said: ‘The deal is unique in that we were able to secure a super senior investment and make the company healthy again. We solved an extremely complicated problem and still positioned our capital on top of the sack.’
The plant includes a 25 million-gallon ethanol refinery and an anaerobic digester, which converts cattle manure into fuel and energy. The private investment firm is planning the have the plant operational again by 2011.
The ethanol plant is a closed-loop production facility as it ran on biomethane captured from agricultural waste in order to produce the corn-derived biofuel. The biogas was produced from 28,000 head of cattle, which were fed on distillers grain – a by-product of the ethanol production process.
When in operation the plant generated 46 units of energy for every unit of energy derived from fossil fuels.
