White Dog Labs to purchase the former butanol biorefinery of Green Biologics in Minnesota

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Type of post: NEWS.

White Dog Labs (WDL) has recently announced that the district court for Morrison county (MN, USA) has approved its bid to acquire the Central Minnesota Renewables (CMR) plant in Little Falls. WDL will use it to manufacture animal nutrition products.
Press release: “White Dog Labs announces an agreement to purchase the CMR plant in Little Falls, MN”, 4/2/2020.
Related posts:
- “Green Biologics starts the construction of its n-butanol and acetone biorefinery in Minnesota”, 9/12/2015.
- “Green Biologics starts shipments of biobutanol and acetone from its Little Falls biorefinery”, 19/12/2016.
- “Green Biologics shuts down its Minnesota biorefinery”, 30/7/2019.

Figure 1. White Dog Labs to purchase the former butanol biorefinery of Green Biologics in Minnesota

GBL started the construction of its biobased n-butanol and acetone manufacturing facility in Little Falls on September 1st, 2015. The existing site (a 20 million gallon per year ethanol plant), formerly known as The Central MN Ethanol Cooperative (CMEC), was acquired by GBL in December 2014 and renamed as Central MN Renewables (CMR). At the end of 2016, GBL launched the first shipments of biobutanol and acetone. Last July, the company announced through a succinct press release on its website that it was shutting down the plant.

Now, the plant will be used to produce WDL’s animal nutrition products: ProTyton™ (a sustainable premium protein for aquaculture) and MiruTyton™ (a butyrate feed-additive). Cargill and WDL have recently announced an off-take agreement for ProTyton. Made up of 80% protein, it is made from corn and it shares production costs with its co-product MiruTyton. WDL is currently negotiating a MiruTyton offtake with a major feed-additive company.

While WDL has developed and scaled up the anaerobic fermentation process for these products, its plant operation will be supported by the management of Midwest Renewable Energy (MRE). The CMR plant has a CleanSugar™ production module made by FQPT. Membrane filtration will be provided by Graver Technologies, and the reengineering of the plant for ProTyton is being carried out by AdvanceBio.

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