VeraSun Energy Passes 1B Gallons of Corn Ethanol Production Capacity

1 April 2008

VeraSun Energy Corp., one of the nation’s largest ethanol producers, announced the startup of its 110 million gallon per year (MMGY) production facility located near Bloomingburg, Ohio. With the closing of the merger between VeraSun and US BioEnergy becoming effective 1 April 2008, the Bloomingburg biorefinery represents the 11th VeraSun facility in operation, pushing the company’s annual operating capacity to more than one billion gallons of corn ethanol.

In addition to the 11 current operating facilities, VeraSun expects to start up five more facilities in 2008, increasing its overall production capacity to 1.64 billion gallons and becoming the largest ethanol producer in the United States.

The Bloomingburg facility is the fourth operating ethanol production facility in the state of Ohio and one of the three biorefineries VeraSun purchased from ASAlliances Biofuels, LLC in August 2007. Total production capacity at the Bloomingburg facility represents more than 30% of Ohio’s total capacity of 345MMGY.

Founded in 2001, Verasun has six facilities are currently either under construction or development with a combined capacity of 660MMGY. Upon completion of the new facilities, VeraSun Energy will have an annual production capacity of approximately 1.75 billion gallons. The company announced it started construction at its Aurora facility to extract oil from dried distillers grains, a co-product of the ethanol process, for use in biodiesel production.