Gevo restarts isobutanol production at Luverne: what’s happening now, what happened?

The drought and the corn crisis

Last year’s debilitating drought – a field near Shenandoah, IA in August 2012.

The path forward from 2012’s microbial infections might have looked differently if corn prices had not soared following the 2012 drought. The original backup plan for Luverne in the commissioning phase was to return to ethanol production, or to continue to produce isobutanol and work through yield and process improvement. But, as Gruber noted to the Digest, “it’s one thing if corn is $4 or $5. With corn at $7.50 and going to $8, profitable ethanol production was essentially out of the question, so we decided to pause production last fall after generating the isobutanol we needed for initial market development.”

In today’s Digest, we look at the path to full production, the Redfield project and other opportunities for expansion, the Gevo-Butamax dispute, and the bottom line, via the page links below.