The first steps in a merger dance?
BEST Energies & Sanimax Join Forces to Create Major Biodiesel Enterprise
Wisconsin Ag Connection - 12/10/2007
Wisconsin's two largest biodiesel companies are partnering to bring the
state's second largest biodiesel plant on-line before the end of the
year. BEST Energies Inc. is beginning start-up of a new 10 million
gallon biodiesel plant located in Cashton with new partner Sanimax
Energy. BEST Energies will operate the facility, while Sanimax Energy
will market all of the production. Sanimax also operates a 20 million
gallon plant in DeForest.
The Cashton facility will be using
primarily by-product corn oil from ethanol production and other crude
feedstocks in its proprietary technology platform.
Sanimax
fired up their DeForest plant in May 2007, with plans to produce the
alternative fuel from a variety of feedstocks, including recycled
restaurant oil from the Sanimax Grease facility next door. Sanimax
President and CEO Mike Langenhorst says the 15,000 square-foot plant
uses a patented multi-feedstock technology developed by Nova Biosource
Fuels to transform recycled cooking grease, rendered animal fats and
vegetable oils into high-quality, clean burning biodiesel fuel. They
have the capacity to produce about 20 million gallons per year.
Meanwhile,
the Cashton project kicked off a year ago in the city's Greens Business
Park. At that time, BEST Energies also hoped to begin producing
electricity by late 2007 using synthetic gas made from manure and
sawdust at a pyrolysis unit that would be built near the biodiesel
plant.
