Broomfield firm gets $76 million federal biofuel grant

Gargi Chakrabarty, Rocky Mountain News

Published March 1, 2007 at midnight

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A $76 million government grant should help a Broomfield company produce more ethanol faster at its plant in Georgia.

Range Fuels is among six companies that will receive part of as much as $385 million in grants for biofuels projects over four years, the U.S. Department of Energy said Wednesday.

Range Fuels CEO Mitch Mandich, a former senior vice president of worldwide sales and support at Apple Computer, said the money would benefit production at the company's plant in Soperton in Treutlen County, Georgia.

The plant will break ground this year and produce about 40 million gallons of ethanol per year.

It will use 1,200 tons per day of wood chips and forest waste as feedstock and likely come online before 2009.

"The DOE grant will allow us to scale the plant to produce more gallons of ethanol, and more quickly, than otherwise," said Mandich.

"We will first start with 10 million gallons a year and keep adding modules to it to end up becoming considerably bigger than 40 million gallons a year," he said.

President Bush wants the United States to be using at least 35 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2017.

Production of corn-based ethanol is expected to top out at around 15 billion gallons, leaving cellulosic ethanol produced from corn stalks, wood chips and wild grasses, and other renewable fuels to make up the difference.

Range Fuels was formed in July with private equity. Former Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla's Khosla Ventures put a significant amount into the company.

The project in Georgia includes other partners such as Merrick and Co., PRAJ Industries, Georgia Forestry Commission, Yeomans Wood and Timber, Truetlen County Development Authority, BioConversion Technology and Douglas County-based CH2M Hill.

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