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New Bio-diesel Plant Opens
March 19, 2008
A new bio-diesel plant could fuel more jobs and the economy in Michiana.
Xengerga officially opened the country's first high capacity bio-diesel plant Wednesday in LaPorte.
This is the first of many plants for the Florida based company. They are targeting 20 major U.S. cities during their first phase of plant openings.
Company officials say the plant will bring new jobs to the community and it represents the first step in gaining independence from foreign oil.
The LaPorte plant is yielding new opportunities for local farmers and could have a huge economic impact on Michiana.
Bill Cleland, President of 5C Farms says, “I burn B-20 which is 20% soy-diesel and this is an opportunity to where the farmers can actually produce the soy-bean and turn around and burn it back as their own fuel."
Cleland says he's happy the new Xenerga plant will be able to use the potatoes he grows to help produce renewable bio-fuel.
Cleland says, "It’s exciting because they're taking waste oil from restaurants and that type of thing and we're trying to extract oil from things that are commonly just getting hauled to the land field."
Agriculture officials say soybean bio-fuel plants are unable to use different types of plant based products to produce bio-fuels. The new Xenerga plant is able to convert various types of plant based products into bio-fuel.
Xenerga President Victor Clewes says, "We can take soybean, palm oil, coconut oil, waste vegetable oil, animal fat, chicken fat. So if one side of the market goes down we can switch feed stocks."
State Government, Commercial Developers, and Agriculture officials say the Xenerga plant represents a brighter future for Indiana and the country.
Bill Hunt, President of ANCON Construction says, "Anything we can do to help lesson the dependency on oil is good for the United States. It’s good for Indiana, and just good in general for the population."
Bio-fuel industry officials say only time will tell what the impact plant based fuels will have on our nations economy.
Clewes says, "I don't think it will in the short term I think we're looking at quite some time before the market has a profound effect in seeing it challenging gas prices."
The LaPorte County facility is capable of producing 5 million gallons of alternative fuels a year. Company officials say the plant will be fully operational in 8 to 12 weeks.
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