Company chose non-automated biodiesel facility to foster job growth

Company chose non-automated biodiesel facility to foster job growth

 

http://www.durantdemocrat.com/articles/2006/06/19/news/news8.txt

 

At the Durant biodiesel facility, Earth Biofuels intends to hire significantly more employees than typical biodiesel plants, while only producing a fraction of the biodiesel.

 

Durant's plant was not designed to be an automated, but rather take advantage of tax incentives for hiring more employees.

 

A listing of biodiesel plants proposed to be built this year was recently published in Biodiesel Magazine. The list is made up of 65 plants with an average proposed name plate design capacity of 22.4 million gallons per year. This is a marked increase over the 2005 list, which contained only 36 plants with an average capacity of 14 million gallons per year. According to the Tax Policy Commission at the Oklahoma Tax Office, the name plate capacity of the Durant facility is 10 million gallons per year. The name plate capacity is the amount of biodiesel plants are certified to produce.

 

Plants contacted from this list were automated plants, in operation 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. All plants that were contacted produced or proposed to produce more than 20 million gallons per year.

 

One reason for such a large roster of employees at the Earth Biofuels alternative fuels facility in Durant, as cited by executives at Earth Biofuels, was its intention to purposely not automate the Durant facility to allow for the hiring of more personnel.

 

While most modern biodiesel facilities try to cut costs and stay competitive by automating their processes as much as possible, Earth Biofuels has taken a different approach to the industry.

 

Earth Biofuels Director of Communications Rob Reed said, “Why not build an automated plant? These run on computers and require very few employees. The Durant facility is not automated, in part, because it's intended to provide jobs. The federal biodiesel subsidy is part of the JOBS Act, and the company receives a state employment tax credit. So there are incentives, in addition to the benefits of employing people. The Durant facility will also operate 24/7 with 4.2 shifts when it's running at full capacity; many other biodiesel facilities don't run around the clock.”

 

The tax incentives that Reed referenced are where the reports that Earth Biofuels plans to hire 148 people have come from. Reed explained the number of employees that had been determined by Earth Biofuels in conjunction with the Oklahoma Department of Commerce was 148. He went on to say ? employees is the maximum we can get incentives for, the company will not receive incentives for the 149th employee.”

 

The number of 148 was determined by trying to estimate the absolute highest number employees the plant would hire under optimal circumstances.

 

Reed and Earth Biofuels believe that the company can stay competitive in its industry by using state and federal government incentives.