Gevo Provides Luverne Plant Update
Key highlights for the quarter included:
- Produced approximately 190,000 gallons of isobutanol, the highest quarterly production level in Gevo’s history, representing an annualized rate of over 750,000 gallons per year;
- Demonstrated an isobutanol fermentation production capacity of approximately 1.5 million gallons per year based on the results measured across the last 6 weeks of production in the quarter;
- Produced a record number of batches in a quarter since switching the Luverne Plant to the Side-by-Side mode of production (“SBS”), achieving Gevo’s targeted back-to-back 5-day turnaround batch times over much of the quarter;
- Surpassed production cost targets, demonstrating variable costs of production of less than the targeted
$3.00-3.50 per gallon1; and - Ethanol production continued to operate well in the SBS configuration of the plant, with 2.8 million gallons of ethanol produced in the quarter.
For the year, the volume of isobutanol production was approximately 440,000 gallons, below the previously announced estimate of approximately 500,000 gallons.
On
“I was extremely pleased with the isobutanol production process in the fourth quarter. Our operators have got the process down to a standard routine, operating in 5-day batch-to-batch cycles. We have continued to improve the costs of our isobutanol batches, better than we expected. We achieved record quarterly production results for isobutanol since switching the Luverne Plant to SBS. As compared to the third quarter of 2016 (our previous best quarter), we increased overall isobutanol production by approximately 25%, batch size by approximately 15% and number of batches by 10%. These results will be extremely helpful in guiding the design of our planned expansion of the Luverne Plant. I congratulate our team in
“We did take the plant down in late December, as a result of some issues with our RTO, which contributed to Gevo’s annual isobutanol production coming in below our prior guidance. This is equipment that is used in both the isobutanol and ethanol production processes. We are currently taking advantage of the RTO being offline to make further equipment upgrades, to avoid having to take the plant offline for this in the future. We have significantly improved our capital structure and balance sheet over the past few quarters, which has given us the ability to perform maintenance and upgrades now designed to avoid production disruptions in the future. While the expense associated with the work we are doing on the RTO is relatively low, our stronger balance sheet that we have today makes these types of investment decisions very straightforward. It is important to note that our isobutanol-specific equipment is operating well, and as expected,” added Dr. Gruber.
About
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements, which include statements relating to the Luverne Plant’s operations and production, including when production operations will recommence, are made on the basis of the current beliefs, expectations and assumptions of the management of
1 Assumes corn price of
Media ContactDavid Rodewald The David James Agency, LLC +1 805-494-9508 gevo@davidjamesagency.com Investor ContactShawn M. Severson EnergyTech Investor, LLC +1 415-233-7094 gevo@energytechinvestor.com @ShawnEnergyTech www.energytechinvestor.com