Alliance BioEnergy offers to buy Florida ethanol plant

If successful the company will begin to retrofit the front end of the facility immediately with its patented CTS process and quickly be converting local yard waste into Cellulosic Ethanol through an option agreement with the County.

INEOS Bio broke ground on the plant in February 2011 and completed the $130 million facility in 2012. As reported in TCPalm on December 27, 2016, “INEOS Bio announced it was putting its ethanol business – including the 8mmgy Vero Beach demonstration site – up for sale. In a statement, INEOS Bio said, …the economic drivers for the development of the technology (gasification fermentation) no longer aligned with the company’s strategic objectives.

Though details surrounding the specific offer are covered by non-disclosure agreements, Alliance BioEnergy Plus CEO, Daniel de Liege, has been encouraged by the response and support he has received from the county, chamber, economics development office and community. “County officials have been incredibly supportive of our effort to acquire the facility and understand the tremendous benefits we bring with keeping the facility open and saving dozens of jobs,” said De Liege.

The offer signals a critical, yet exciting next step in the evolution of the patented CTS process. “This is primetime for us,” remarked De Liege. “Our engineers and scientists have spent the better part of the last decade working tirelessly to perfect our technology and we have arrived at a point where we are ready to start putting it to work commercially. A complete, high-tech facility already built provides the company with an opportunity to begin utilizing the CTS technology to produce high quantities of low-cost cellulosic ethanol quickly and at a fraction of the cost compared to building from the ground up or other processes.”

If successful and, up and running at capacity, sometime in early 2018, the facility will produce eight million gallons a year of cellulosic ethanol valued at $33 million a year with a pretax profit of more than $24 million a year.

The company has begun the due diligence phase of the process and will assess the viability of the land, feedstock, permits, years of testing and activity at the site as well as local, state and federal environmental filings and regulations.

Alliance BioEnergy +, Inc. (ALLM) is a publicly traded company focusing on the commercialization and licensing of a patented cellulose conversion technology that it controls through a master license agreement with the University of Central Florida. www.alliancebioe.com/

The CTS process is the only known patented, dry mechanical process that can convert virtually any cellulose material into sugars and other products in a matter of minutes with no liquid acids, no applied heat, pressure or hazardous materials of any kind.