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The long-awaited project, which will convert used vegetable oil into diesel and home heating oil, still needs to
raise an additional $300,000 in start-up capital from Co-op Power’s 420 members, according to Lynn
Benander, the co-operative’s president. But she said she believes the business will have that money by March
to start with 14 workers making 1.75 million gallons of biodiesel a year.
“It doesn’t really matter,” said Benander, adding that $50,000 of the remaining $300,000 has already been
committed. “We have patient capital, so when we get it, we’ll move forward.”
After winning a series of federal loans and seeking investors for the project as far back as 2005, the
co-operative changed its strategy last May, announcing a new “community- based approach” of turning to its
members for loans and even collecting the grease and delivering it.
“I’m really encouraged by how quickly we were able to raise that amount of money,” said Sam King, who was
hired this summer as general manager for the project *. He expressed optimism about being able to raise the
$300,000 quickly. “The momentum from that will help us carry that (future fundraising) forward. It will be soon.”
At its 26.5-acre Silvio Conte Drive site, the foundation has been poured, and holding tanks for storing the
biodiesel have been installed. The town has issued a special zoning permit, a storage permit for biodiesel fuel
and electrical and plumbing permits.
But there’s been no application for a building permit so far, said town Building Inspector Mark Snow, who
added that a permit could take up to 30 days to issue. The state issued an air quality permit in 2007 and a
“beneficial use determination to recycle vegetable oil and mixed cooking oils. Both state permits may have to
be revised because the project has been modified, according to Department of Environmental Protection
spokeswoman Catherine Skiba. Once the steel building is put in place, electrical and mechanical hookups
will follow, and depending on how quickly the startup money can be gathered from members, Benander said,
“We’re hoping to launch in March. We’re not on a rigorous time schedule; we’re following our members’ lead.
When they’re able to put the money in, we’ll get started.”
Once that happens, she expects to apply for other grants and loans so that a second processor would be
added within a year.
Co-op Power, which has outgrown its space at the Greenfield Venture Center on Wells Street and plans to
move to larger quarters “somewhere between Northampton and Greenfield” in mid-December, has contracted
with Holyokebased ReEnergizer to de-water and filter used cooking oil from more than 125 restaurants and
catering operations around the Pioneer Valley and deliver them to Northeast Biodiesel in Greenfield.
Although it could take up to seven weeks for the steel building to be delivered to the site by Connecticut-based
MPE Inc., Benander said she’s convinced that construction will be completed by year’s end. The project, which
was originally expected to be up and running by the spring of 2006, has been downsized from its original 3
million gallons a year and slowed its timetable to assure that it remains locally owned.
“We’re taking our time and we’re doing it well and we’re doing it right,” Benander said. “What we’re going to
end up with is a plant that we’re going to own here in our community for a very long time. If we’d taken the
venture capital money that was offered to us in 2005, the plant would have already been sold for parts.”
After directors rejected that $2 million offer in 2005 that would have had the plant burning virgin soy oil, the
same investor purchased an existing Delaware plant, which she said was sold for scrap parts three years later.
“We’re doing it in a way that’s going to keep this asset in our community for a very long time to come,”
Benander said. “We’re very proud of that accomplishment.”
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or 413-772-0261 Ext. 269
*This article is from November 5th 2011. It mentions Sam King as general manager of Northeast Biodiesel.
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