Ethanol plant marks 10 years

One of Portland’s industries is turning 10 years old this year.

POET Biorefining’s 10-year anniversary is Monday, and the company will celebrate with free tours and refreshments from 1 to 4 p.m Friday.

Matt Tomano, general manager of POET’s Portland plant, said the celebration is a chance for the community to learn more about the company.

“We just want to give the public an opportunity to come out, and just kind of see what we do,” said Tomano. “They can see and hear more about our production process.”

Tomano started working at the plant when it first opened, beginning as the plant’s controller and moving his way up to general manager.

POET’s Portland plant first produced around 60 million gallons of ethanol a year in 2007. Because of improvements and upgrades, now the plant produces more than 78 million gallons annually using about 29 million bushels of local corn.

It’s product is sold through the midwest and blended with gasoline.

“We like to buy locally, we’ve got the capacity to bring corn in by rail, but nearly 100 percent of the corn that we’ve bought since we started up the plant has been local truck driven corn,” Tomano said. “That helps us with costs, helps build up for farmers some decent commodity prices. It’s a good partnership.”

Matt Clamme, the plant manager, has also been at the Portland plant since its opening in 2007. Originally from Hartford City, Clamme came to POET after working at 3M.

“It was just a really exciting opportunity and challenge to start a plant up from scratch,” Clamme said. “It’s exciting to see how far the plant’s come from the early day to just trying to figure out how things work and keeping it running on day-to-day basis. The growth has been fun.”

Tomano said Clamme has been integral in overseeing some of the major upgrades to the plant, including the installation of a steam turbine this year to generate one-third of the plant’s power needs.

“We have six plants (running steam turbines) now. Three out of the four plants in Indiana now have them running and all three in Ohio,” Clamme said. “Alexandria just started up Thursday. Ours started in the spring. Basically now, with the six plants that have it running it’s almost like running two plants for free.”

In addition to generating some of its own electricity, the POET plant also produces other things in addition to ethanol.

Annually, the plant also makes 178,000 tons of Dakota Gold animal feed. It also produces corn oil, which is used as a feed stock for biodiesel production. 

Overall, Tomano and Clamme both said the community has been a major benefit to the plant in Portland, helping the biofuel facility thrive and grow.

“I’m from the area originally and I’ve been happy to be part of the plant that really provides jobs in the area,” Tomano said. “Portland the Jay County community has been a really good partners for POET Portland. Biofuels of course are clean energy that’s home grown fuel and I’m proud to say that we’re making a clean biofuel right here in Indiana, helping boost farm income and lowering the price at the pump.”