Here is an excerpt from Golden Grain LLC's most recent filing on 16 March:We are continuing to fine tune the operation of our corn oil extraction equipment. We continue to experience reliability issues with the corn oil extraction equipment. page.17
Hey SkunK - Who's design were they using? Not "200 proof" positive - since they do not say after it was built. But this is what they said in July of 2008:
“Golden Grain is going to put in the ICM-designed corn-oil-extraction system here,” confirmed Walt Wendland, president of Golden Grain Energy. “We will install back-end extraction equipment to take out the free oil in the solubles.” The ethanol plant expects to generate enough corn oil to produce 15 MMgy of biodiesel. http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/article.jsp?article_id=2450
Not sure how much of 2009 they were running the COES, although here on page seven they expect it "will be operational during the first quarter of our 2009 fiscal year." Yet according to their shareholder power point presentation at the annual meeting they only sold 5.2 million lbs of corn oil in FY 2009 (Page 36) [at 7.6#/gallons that is 684,211 gallons - or .684MMgy] (SkunK note: A good biodiesel plant can get nearly 1:1 ratio of corn oil feedstock to biodiesel)
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From the what its worth department. GreenShift shareholders may find it very interesting that ICM has a business model where they have certain technologies that are licensed. Another company, Fagen, installs the technology and pays ICM a license fee. I can imagine that if Fagen were to just go out and install ICM's technology without paying the license fee they could do it much cheaper and with higher margins? But Fagen does not. Fascinating. . ."We were granted a license by ICM to use certain ethanol production technology necessary to operate our ethanol plant. The cost of the license granted by ICM was included in the amount we paid to Fagen to design and built our ethanol plant and expansion."
p. 7
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SkunK
OT-PS. If the SkunK was making home made wine (not that I ever had - I said "if") , and it was as cloudy as the corn oil above, I would let 'er set for awhile no matter how thirsty I was gettng. And if it had that much sediment - I would carefully siphon it into another bottle. I have been told by "others" that such impurities cause hangovers - can't imagine impurities help at the biodiesel plant either.
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7 comments:
Between reliability issues and patent litigation risk, it's a wonder anyone buys from ICM at all.
Serves 'em right for buying the knock-off instead of the real mccoy.
I agree! Cloudy may be a desirable quality of a dirty martini but NO where in my reading about wine has there ever been an indication that "opaque" was a good trait in wine.
Normally, I am pretty diplomatic and don't like to point out others' flaws, but I cannot resist this one ...
Skunk's quote says that Fagen licensed corn oil extraction from ICM!!!!
Last time I checked the free and open to the public USPTO website, ICM didn't have any patents, either issued or pending, for corn oil extraction!!!!
****LOL****
Gee, that team at Fagan is about as smart as that ICM team, eh?! They paid for a license nothing!!!
It is clear as day to me ... companies like ICM & Fagan were desperate for work during the downturn ... COES was the only game in town during the downturn ... so, they attempted to "allegedly and beyond a reasonable doubt in my mind" pirate the GreenShift technology.
The damages are still accruing at treble damages. If those indemnity agreements hold up (which I doubt), ICM will eventually be bankrupted by patent infringement claims.
If they don't hold up (which is more likely), then ICM's reputation will be so battered that they will have trouble getting any new business for any kind of new technology at all, because they have shown themselves to be thoroughly lacking in that department.
Either way, I wouldn't want to be an employee or shareholder of ICM right now.
The town of Colwich, KS ought to be turned back into corn fields, instead of being a haven for alleged patent pirates!
Growing corn is a higher and better use than alleged patent infringement, which is about all that seems to go on in the town of Colwich!!!
And, we've got some great federal prisons in this country, which is about where Mr. Vandergriend belongs, in my opinion.
The employees of ICM can all go free and clear, as far as I am concerned, but Vandergriend, his Board of Directors, and his shareholders .... those are the ones I want to hold responsible.
We ought to start a new chain gang with the shareholders, board of directors, and CEO of ICM.
They can spend the rest of their lives complaining about the big government, as they dig drainages ditches on a roadside in rural Mississippi!
"What we have here, Mr. VanderGriend, is a failure to communicate!!"
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