Englewood-based Gevo Inc. said Tuesday that it will temporarily suspend production of bio-isobutanol at its Luverne, Minn. production facility to produce ethanol.
In a statement,
Over the past 17 weeks, said the company, Gevo has successfully produced and shipped commercial quality product in railcars for customers.
“To date, we have proven we can produce bio-isobutanol, and do it on a commercial scale — years ahead of the competition,” said Patrick Gruber, chief executive of Gevo.
“This start-up is very typical of other start-ups we have done: you have to learn a lot in a very short period of time, both what works well and what needs to be adjusted. Early indications are that, while we are making significant progress towards economic production levels, we will not achieve our desired year-end run rate – instead we would expect to achieve that during 2013.”
As a result, said Gruber, in order to maximize cash flow, Gevo will temporarily shift to ethanol production.
This option, he said, is a result of Gevo’s patented retrofit design that allows for switching between isobutanol and ethanol, he said.
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Bio-isobutanol applications for specialty chemicals and chemical intermediates sectors include groundbreaking work in paraxylene with toray and Coca-Cola, he said.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939, hpankratz@denverpost.com or twitter.com/howardpankratz
