The announcement of a 21-million bushel soybean solvent-extraction facility, 30-million gallon biodiesel facility and specialty soybean mechanical extraction plant brings the promise of an exciting future to Crookston’s Ag industry. The process to determine a location for a new Epitome Energy, LCC plant began with finding an underutilized and underserved soybean market in Minnesota said Dennis Egan, President & CEO. “When we started looking at this project, we looked at it through the lens of the farmer, the local grower, and wherein Minnesota we could have the greatest impact,” said Dennis Egan. While working with the Minnesota Soybean Association and the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council we started to look at and identify areas that were underutilized and underserved. We identified ten cities in northern Minnesota and quickly narrowed that down to three.”
Egan said Crookston quickly rose to the top of the selection process. “As we visited cities Crookston quickly came to the top of the process for some reasons including a willing community interested in the project and no value-add soybean processing facility for 200 miles, and in 2017 there were 1.8 million acres of soybeans planted,” said Egan. “The City itself with all the utilities that were that, with Otter Tail Power, water and sewer, rail attachment we found all the components we were looking for to be successful in Crookston.”
Egan says a University of Minnesota Extension study shows the facility could have a far-reaching impact across the region supporting 85-100 jobs at the plant and up to 300 industry-based jobs. “When we looked at this project, we contracted a study with the University of Minnesota Extension for the economic impact, but also the impact to the local grower,” said Egan. “What we found with the study is the basis will be almost $.20 more per bushel in payments to the local grower. When we’re fully operational, there is a $322 million impact economically to the community. We’ll employ 80-100 employees with payroll and benefits exceeding $5 million, and according to the study other ancillary industries will support up to 300 jobs to support the operation of this facility.”
Egan believes the plant will help local growers avoid the fluctuation of the global soybean market. “The other big part of this with today’s economy and what we saw happen in China, will the full trade come back,” said Egan. “Right now, most of the beans are put on a rail car and shipped to the west coast, but unfortunately this year the local grower has been told to find as much storage as they can because we don’t have the market, so we’ll help with this global fluctuation in the market.”
Another benefit of Crookston is the proximity of a University and the potential to develop training soybean training programs with nation-wide benefits. “We are developing a relationship with the University in Crookston and how can we introduce training programs that will benefit not only this plant but the soybean industry nationally,” said Egan. “As we continue to have conversations with the University and the local proximity to this, we think we’re right on the cutting edge of having some pretty spectacular things in the Crookston area.”
Epitome Energy continues to engage with potential partners, and state soybean representatives as well as elected and appointed officials. “We continue to engage with potential partners and investors and move forward with those relationships,” said Egan. “We’re hoping first or second quarter we’ll be able to announce some additional strategic partners. In the meantime, we’re out meeting with Commissioner Thom Peterson, the new Ag Commissioner, who is very interested in this project and will meet with him at the end of the month to keep him educated on what’s going on here. The Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council has had some conversations with the governor and then we’re engaged with local elected officials to continue to be advocates for this project.”
These discussions should help Epitome Energy move into the permitting phase by the second quarter explained Egan. “We hope to raise our seed money in the first quarter of ’19 which will then allow us to do some additional work so that we can move forward with our permitting,” said Egan. “That will be a big piece to ensure our Environmental Assessment Worksheet is in place and some additional engineering is done to finalize types of technology deployed in the project and go to Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to start our air permit process.”
Egan highlight several other entities Epitome has been working closely with and hopes to soon announce a timeline for the groundbreaking. “Agricultural Utilization Research Institute has been a significant part of discussions, Department of Ag, Department of Transportation, Otter Tail Power has come to the table and been supportive, as well as the City of Crookston,” said Egan. “Craig Hoiseth has been engaged in these conversations and helped champion locally what we’re trying to accomplish. We’re excited to finally announce we’re coming to Crookston and work through anything at the state and local level we need to. And we’re excited in the near future to announce a timeline of terms of when we’ll be able to put a shovel in the ground.”
