Officials of a planned ethanol plant have started their regional fundraising drive in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. Siouxland Ethanol plans to build the facility in Nebraska, about 10 miles west of Sioux City. President Tom Lynch says response is strong. Lynch says they’re getting phone calls from all over the area and have talked to people at sessions where they’d been invited by local people. “We’re sure that we’ll be able to sell this out in a very short time.” Lynch says planners just got the go-ahead to offer shares to local investors earlier this month from the Securities and Exchange Commission, and want to begin construction this fall on the plant, about a mile west of Jackson. They hope to use about 18-Million bushels of corn a year. Capital costs for startup likely will be 80-Million and once it’s ready to run, the plant should create 32 to 36 new jobs with a payroll of about one-point-8-Million dollars a year. The plant will be a fifty-Million-gallon dry-mill facility. The plant will be powered by natural gas and he says there may also be some “landfill recovery gas” used as well. Lynch says the planners have to raise between 24 and 28-Million dollars to be ready to start construction. The first meeting was just last week and organizers are booked for investor presentations in Iowa and the other two states almost every day through the end of September. Just last week, operators of the Little Sioux Little Sioux Corn Processors plant near Marcus in Cherokee County announced plans to expand.
