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