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Reports of the demise of Great Plains – The Camelina Company have been greatly exaggerated.
Rumours surfaced last month at the Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference in Saskatoon that Great Plains, one of two major players in the fledgling camelina industry, had gone out of business.
“If it has, that’s news to me,” said Sam Huttenbauer, chief executive officer of the Cincinnati, Ohio, company.
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But he did acknowledge that rumours of the company failing to fulfill its 2009 contracts with Canadian farmers in a timely manner are accurate.
Huttenbauer assured growers their contracts will be honoured in the future when Great Plains finalizes a supply agreement with a new customer.
This year’s “hiccup” stems from the financial woes in the United States biodiesel sector.
Great Plains crushes camelina for biodiesel firms that have been hit hard by the recession, high soybean prices and the failure of U.S. Congress to renew a critical tax credit that expired in December.
Huttenbauer said more than 80 percent of U.S. biodiesel capacity has been shut down due to the lack of a tax credit.
“Our company, as a provider of feedstock into that industry, has certainly suffered,” he said.
“That really impacted our ability to move the product as rapidly as we hoped when we initially created these contracts.”
He estimates Great Plains has moved about 20 percent of the camelina it contracted with Canadian growers in 2009. The company intended to have picked up 80 percent by now.
Bill Ross, executive director of the Camelina Association of Canada, has heard the company contracted about 75,000 acres of the crop across Western Canada.
Huttenbauer wouldn’t divulge the exact number but said it’s in that range.
The company has been in discussions with a major new customer Huttenbauer claims will be the biggest buyer in the history of the crop. An announcement is expected soon.
“In the next little bit, we’ll be moving the remaining 80 percent of (the 2009 contracted camelina) in one fell swoop,” he said.
Huttenbauer was in Canada nailing down the logistics for transporting the oilseed crop to crushing facilities south of the border.
“Growers certainly will be able to take quite a bit of confidence in that announcement that this crop is here to stay,” said Huttenbauer.
He would not divulge what company Great Plains is negotiating with, other than to say it is not a biodiesel firm but in the biofuel arena. Great Plains has been working with the airline industry, which has expressed interest in camelina-based biofuel.
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6/23/10
11:45:35 AM
