Aylmer plant leads the way in ethanol innovation

by SUSAN MANN

Aylmer-based ethanol producer Integrated Grain Processors Cooperative Ethanol Inc. has received a $3.7 million federal government loan to install new technology that will help increase the company’s production.

While similar equipment is being installed in U.S. plants, Integrated Grain Processors will be the first company in the world to be up and running with the technology, said the co-operative’s CEO, Jim Grey, in a telephone interview today.

The new fibre separation technology will boost the company’s output of ethanol, corn oil and dried distillers grain by about 10 per cent, Grey said.

It will also enable the company to run the plant faster so IGPC is planning to boost its corn acquisitions this year from southwestern Ontario farmers to 18 million bushels, up from 16 million bushels currently.

Grey explained the technology removes “the fibre portion, which is essentially the skin of the corn kernel and just in doing that it essentially allows us to run the plant faster so we get greater efficiencies as a plant.”

The removal of the fibre also “increases the protein level of our byproduct, our DDG (dried distillers grain) stream, so that creates greater value for that product,” he said.

Once the technology is up and running, the company will be able to do more projects, such as taking the fibre and converting it into sugars “and then convert those sugars into new products.”

Grey said the company produces 52 million gallons or 200 million litres of ethanol annually.

The funding announcement was made Tuesday in Aylmer by federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz.

Grey said the $3.7 million from the federal government is an interest-free, 10-year loan. The federal government said in its release the money is from the five-year AgriInnovation program.

The total cost of the technology, a series of machines housed in a large building, is $10 million, Grey said. It was developed by U.S.-based ICM Inc., the company that initially built the Integrated Grain Processors’ plant.

Grey said construction to install the technology started in the fall of 2014 and the company is slated “to commission the system in May.”

Integrated Grain Processors is a division of IGPC Inc. and is one of Ontario’s largest co-operatives, the federal government release says. It employs 50 people full time at the Aylmer plant and was founded in 2002 by 780 farmers and agribusinesses. BF