Marquis signs first corn delivery contracts

Jim Rapp (left) listens intently as Mark Marquis explains how the wooden slip form system will operate in the construction of two 150-foot grain silos. Concrete will be poured constantly for nearly a week, and the wooden form will raise at the rate on one inch every five minutes, pushing itself up on the hardened concrete. (BCR photo/Barb Kromphardt)

E-mail this story

Print this story

Share

HENNEPIN — The first corn has been contracted for delivery this fall for the new Marquis ethanol plant.

Marquis Grain signed contracts with three local corn producers Wednesday for delivery of corn to the plant, now under construction.

“The contracts signed today will be the first of many as we supply the plant 36 million bushels annually,” said Jeff Peterson, general manager of Marquis Grain. Marquis Grain is a separate entity, and will be purchasing all the corn for the plant. “As plant start-up approaches, we will bid aggressively to meet the plant’s corn needs from area grain dealers and farmers, many of whom we have dealt with for nearly 30 years.”

The producers, Terry and Michael Pratt of Neponset and Jim Rapp of Princeton, signed ceremonial first contracts of 1,000 bushels at $4 per bushel, to be the first loads delivered when the plant opens.

On Oct. 19, 2005, Mark Marquis, president and general manager of Marquis Energy, announced his company’s intent to construct a 100 million gallon per year ethanol plant on 120 acres in Putnam County, about one and one-half miles north of Hennepin. Construction began after the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency issued a construction permit on Sept. 28, 2006.

On Wednesday, Marquis said construction of the plant is progressing on schedule to open later this year. He said the first day the plant takes grain will likely be in November, and he anticipates the first grind to be in either late December or early January.

“We are coming up on about 50 percent through our construction phase,” he said. “We’re about seven months into it, with about seven or eight months to go.”

The plant is located just off the Illinois River, 209 miles north of St. Louis and about 90 miles south of Chicago. Marquis said it’s a good location, combined with interstate highways 80, 39 and 180, and Kentville Road, Route 26, and Route 29. Current projections call for 150 trucks in and out per day, five days per week.

The Norfolk Southern Railroad will also be used for transportation, and Marquis said they are beginning construction on a flat area that can store up to 360 railcars.

Work is progressing all over the site. Marquis said 150 workers are currently on site, and that number will top out at 250 next month.

One project Marquis is looking forward to is the construction of two 110-feet tall silos for dried distiller’s grain solubles, an ethanol byproduct, and two 150-feet tall silos for grain storage.

“The slip forms for the silos are probably one exciting part of the construction for us,” Marquis said.

The four silos will be set on a concrete slab that’s 100 feet wide, 200 feet long and 4 feet thick.

“We’ll have two half-million bushel silos that will go up with wood slip forms,” he said. “It will take nearly a week of pouring concrete 24 hours a day.”

Marquis said the pumper truck will pour the concrete down to where the concrete’s already hardened, and the wood slip form lifts itself, at the rate of an inch every five minutes, to shape the new concrete.

“They keep going around with a pumper truck and pumping concrete in here and adding rebar and the form just keeps rising,” he said. “Then you just pour the cap on top.”

In addition to the four silos, there will also be two 1.5 million gallon storage tanks for the finished ethanol.

Marquis said the 230-feet deep test pump for first process well has been drilled and tested.

“That’s been test pumped for eight hours, and it ran about 100 percent over capacity, so we’re going to have a tremendously good water supply,” he said.

Marquis said the site is located on a a huge aquifer, and the water comes from the aquifer, not the Illinois River.

“One of the problems some of the ethanol plant sites have had is whether they had a good enough aquifer,” he said.

After the plant is operational, it should employ about 50 people. Marquis said two of the hires will be for fermentation experts from outside the area, but the rest of the hires should be local.

The plant will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and will produce ethanol 355 days a year, with 10 days down for maintenance.