Pacific Ethanol Temporarily Suspends Its 40 Million a Gallon Plant

Pacific Ethanol said it is temporarily closing the doors on its 40 million gallon a year plant in Madera, Calif.

The company has operations in other places, but clearly, corn ethanol isn’t the best business in the universe. Fuel is down and the price of corn is unpredictable. Still, Pacific actually slightly exceeded earlier goals. It now has 220 million gallons of refinery capacity, a little ahead of its goal of 200 million set in 2006. In today’s climate, it’s tough to say if that’s good or bad, but in the long run it should work as alt-fuel demand is slated to increase with federal mandates. It will have 420 million gallons worth of capacity by the end of 2010.

Pacific will also migrate to cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel. Various refineries serve local markets to cut down transportation costs.

For a walk down memory lane, here’s a story from 2006 when Cascade Investment, Bill Gates’ VC fund, plunked over $80 million into them.