Natural Chem officials chat up Portales business leaders

PORTALES — Officials from Natural Chem visited Portales last week to tell local business leaders they will not regret doing business with the Houston-based renewable energy company.

The company held a meet and greet event last week at Mark's Restaurant in Portales to explain Natural Chem's plans for biodiesel production and the two local plants.

"Our preferred business model is to work with distributors who are already active in the region; we'd like to be in a collaborative partnership. We don't really want to be competing with you," Natural Chem President Robert Salazar told locals in the farming and diesel industries.

Natural Chem Group purchased the former Abengoa ethanol plant after its parent company went bankrupt last November. The intention is to turn the plant into a blending facility for biodiesel. The biodiesel will be created at a plant in Clovis, which Natural Chem plans to have operational next year. Salazar said the Portales plant, which sits in the city's industrial park, will be operational in June.

In the meantime, biodiesel will be shipped to the Portales blending facility from the company's plant in Clinton, Iowa, which has been temporarily shut down for maintenance but will be opened again next month, Salazar said, adding that it is a 10 million gallon production plant, and 30 percent of that will be shipped to New Mexico.

"We bought them (the plants) not to produce ethanol but to be fuel blending distribution terminals with a focus on biodiesel. When we made that commitment, we tasked our engineers with really understanding the biodiesel industry," said Salazar. "We're also working on what we call transload blend terminals; we think West Texas and Lubbock down to Amarillo (are good areas). Part of our game plan is to develop six or seven transload blend terminals where we rail diesel and bio where the market is."

Salazar said his company has focused on rural dairy and farming communities for all their locations due to their heavy use of commercial vehicles.

The company has also sought properties in Corning, Iowa, starting in 2005, and Stanley, Wisconsin, starting in 2003, but with no success at starting up those projects, because "it is hard to move forward with these projects. The banking world does not favor renewable fuel, so it is hard to get funding for renewable fuel plants," Salazar said.

Along with purchasing the plant in Clinton, Iowa, in February to produce biodiesel, the company bought a biodiesel plant in Heyburn, Idaho, in 2010, which is on the back burner until "we see the biogas market improve."

For now, Natural Chem is trying to "establish a presence in the market" with the Portales and Iowa plants before getting the other two off the ground, Salazar said.

"That is something we can expand," Senior Vice President Jerry Roberts said of the blending facilities at last week's meet and greet. "Once we get that blending program going, we can add other locations in West Texas and Albuquerque. (But) those are just discussions at this point."

Salazar said previously that he hopes the Portales plant will initially create 12 jobs and later create up to 35, and the Clovis plant — a project started in August 2014 — could create up to 80 jobs.

Natural Chem had looked at an industrial revenue bond — a property tax waiver inducement that doesn’t financially bind a city — for Clovis, but Salazar has indicated such a move wasn’t likely in Portales.

Mike Kirchhoff, director of the Clinton Regional Development Corp., said since the plant in Clinton, Iowa, has already been operational for at least several years and is just changing ownership, it will likely not see job growth at the moment, "but we will be very supportive of any opportunities to grow the business."

He said he is working to get a meeting with Natural Chem, which acquired the Iowa plant in March.

Salazar said Natural Chem also wants to keep as many locals as possible working at the Portales plant with a handful already working there to prepare it for operation.

"We wanna have a group of people working here who are from this region, and we're going to supply them all the expertise they need, the chemical engineers, the process engineers," Salazar said, adding that the company will contract with local trucking companies to transport the biodiesel to customers.

He also told locals who attended the meeting that they can contact any Natural Chem officials at anytime with questions.

"Every 90 days, we'll be here at least once or twice; we're not going to be an absentee owner," he said. "Today's meeting was really just a chance to come and tell our story."