Advanced BioFuels USA

by Robert Pore (The Grand Island Independent)  A group of visitors from Mexico were in Grand Island Thursday to see the area’s ethanol production.  The 22 visitors represent various aspects of the ethanol industry in Mexico. They were in Grand Island to get an up-close and personal look at the Nebraska ethanol industry, including a visit to a farm, a tour of the Chief Industries ethanol plant in Hastings, the blending terminal in Doniphan, and a visit to Bosselman’s in Grand Island, the state’s largest seller of blended ethanol products.

The idea of the visit, according to Jeff Wilkerson, director of market development for the Nebraska Corn Board, was to give the visitors from Mexico a comprehensive view of the state’s ethanol industry and infrastructure.

Wilkerson said the visit will give them ideas to take back home to aid in the development of their ethanol industry and infrastructure, along with fostering better trade relations between the U.S. and Mexico, the biggest buyer of U.S. corn and Nebraska’s biggest trading partner, along with Canada.

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What makes this trip important, Wilkerson said, is that currently Mexico allows sale of pre-blended E10 in most of the country, but not in Mexico’s three largest cities, including Mexico City, which is home to nearly 23 million people.

“We are trying to help Mexico get ethanol so it can be widespread in their country,” he said.

Wilkerson said if those large cities were to start using an E10 blend, it would be a huge market.

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“Many of them had never visited a farm,” he (Stephan Wittig, the U.S. Grain Council’s Mexico director) said. “They are becoming closer to the whole supply chain by learning how it impacts all the lives from the beginning of the process.”

One of the Mexican delegates is a leader in the country’s energy industry.

Wittig said the visit helps the delegation better understand the whole process of how ethanol is produced, from the farm to the ethanol plant to the blending station to the filling station.

“Our potential market in Mexico is already 720 million gallons per year,” he said. “If you were to add Mexico’s three largest cities, that would represent a market of 1.2 billion gallons per year.”

Wittig said Mexico’s largest constraint right now is infrastructure. The right investments would help Mexico increase its ability to blend more ethanol with gasoline and allow more filling stations to sell the blended product.  READ MORE

Growing trade between Nebraska and Europe (Columbus Telegram)