Verbio hosted a ground-breaking ceremony in South Bend, Indiana, for the expansion of an ethanol plant to establish it as an innovative biorefinery with combined bioethanol-biomethane production.
“In the United States we benefit from attractive framework conditions, low energy and raw material costs, the large volumes of biomass available and a good infrastructure, as well as political decisions that are focused on the long-term, making them more reliable,” said Claus Sauter, chief executive officer of Verbio SE. “In the medium term we will be able to produce more ethanol and biomethane in our plants in Nevada, Iowa, and South Bend than we do in Germany today.”
The ethanol plant in South Bend is one of the first, and oldest, in the United States. Verbio acquired the plant in May 2023 from Mercuria Investments and announced that it planned to make investments totaling US$230 million in the location.
With the start of the plant expansion, South Bend will offer combined production of bioethanol and biomethane based on Verbio’s technology and modeled after its German biorefineries. Verbio was granted approval for the expansion application by the City of South Bend in April 2024. Once the expansion is completed, the new plant will have an annual production capacity of at least 275,578 tons (250,000 tonnes) of bioethanol and 850,000 MWh of biomethane. The commissioning of the combined bioethanol-biomethane production facility is planned for 2026.
The biomethane will be fed into the regional natural gas grid and will be available for use as a biofuel or as a renewable energy source for industrial applications. The fertilizer created in the production process will be returned to agriculture, closing the sustainability cycle.
South Bend Ethanol is Verbio’s second biorefinery project in the United States. The group’s first plant in Nevada, Iowa, has been manufacturing biomethane from maize straw since 2021. The expansion in South Bend coincides with the launch of combined bioethanol-biomethane production at the Nevada plant, which is expected to start in the coming weeks.
