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North Dakota’s Northwood Mills abandons biodiesel for food markets, says US biodiesel too down

February 18, 2008

In North Dakota, the Northwood Mills oilseed crushing plant will switch from processing soybeans for biodiesel to processing canola for the food markets. The company said that declining demand for soybean meal from the Canadian hog industry, as well as reduced demand from biodiesel producers, prompted the switch. The owners said that US biodiesel production was running at 25 percent of capacity.

Recently, management at the Alchem ethanol plant in Grafton, North Dakota said they expected the plant to resume production in May. Tight ethanol margins had forced the plant’s closure in October.

Alchem was one of the first of a rash of 12 plant closures in several Midwest and Southwest states, and was the first to announce a firm re-opening date, aftder a collapse in ethanol prices and soaring feedstock costs forced a series of plant delays and closures.

Despite the overall US slowdown in production, the European Biodiesel Board said that US exports of subsidized biodiesel threaten the existence of the global biodiesel industry. US exports surged to 80,000 tonnes per month last year from an average of 20,000 in 2006. The EBB has lodged an anti-dumping complaint with the European Commission. European mandates are expected to create a market of up to 28 million tonnes of biodiesel by 2020.

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    Written by Jim Lane · Filed Under Producer News, The Daily Biofuel Summary 

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