Investors break ground on a biofuels facility in Hoke County, scheduled to go online by 2009.
By Boris Hartl
Web Content Specialist
RAEFORD – Looking to build North Carolina's first ethanol-processing plant, a Hoke County delegation scheduled a summer tour of a dry mill ethanol plant west of Palestine, Ill.
When Raeford Mayor John McNeill returned from the trip, he was asked to describe the smell of the facility.
"It smells like opportunity. It smells like recognition for Hoke County. It smells like jobs," he responded.
McNeill echoed those same words during a Dec. 4 groundbreaking ceremony for North Carolina's own facility capable of producing about 75 million gallons of corn-based ethanol a year. The facility is one component in a project overseen by Raleigh-based Clean Burn Fuels. The firm is developing the $100 million plant on 500 acres three miles southeast of Raeford — a town about 20 miles west of Fayetteville.
Greg Carlisle, the company construction manager, said the plant could later process corn stalks, scrap wood and switchgrass as cellulosic ethanol. Company CEO Philip Kohl said the ethanol will be sold to oil companies who will in turn blend the substance into gasoline. Clean Burn Fuels is expected to begin production in early 2009, will also sell secondary products including dried distiller grains and carbon dioxide.
Moving Past Oil
The speakers at the ceremony spoke of moving past oil and evading increasing gasoline prices, but stressed the economic boost the facility will bring to Hoke County. Kohl envisions the company hiring 40 employees to handle the daily manufacturing operations and having another 60 people hauling the fuel to terminals including Greensboro, Wilmington and Charlotte.
Interest in Hoke County as a potential biofuels destination is growing. An unnamed company is interested in building a $10 million biodiesel facility in nearby Dundarrach to process animal fat into fuel.
The activity surrounding biofuels development in Hoke County matches North Carolina’s strategic goal of replacing 10 percent of North Carolina's annual gasoline consumption with renewable fuels by 2017, said Jason Nelson, the special projects manager for the Biotechnology Center.
"The Hoke County endeavor is symbolic of rural development and the role rural and agricultural communities around the state can and will play in developing a biofuels industry in North Carolina," he said.
Nationally, the American Coalition for Ethanol reports the United States has 21 states with 135 production facilities online with a total annual capacity of 7 billion gallons.