Blog Archive
Subscribe in a reader

Tracking Industry Information

Posted: January 12, 2009 at 08:31 AM CST

A large part of what we do at Ethanol Producer Magazine is track industry information. One of our most popular items has been our Plant Construction List, which tracks plants that are under construction. It provides monthly updates on the status and pace of construction at U.S. and Canadian plants. Plant List Manager Bryan Sims does a tremendous job keeping tabs on these projects in those in the biodiesel industry for our sister publication, Biodiesel Magazine. From past experience, I can tell you it’s a lot of persistence, phone calls and patience trying to provide readers with the most accurate and up-to-date information available.

For those unfamiliar with the construction list, you won’t find it online. It’s one of the few items in our print magazines that don’t make it to the Web site. However, another plant tracking project that will be online gets its start soon. This week marks the beginning of another project that regularly draws the most attention of any during the calendar year. EPM staff will begin making calls for our annual Proposed Ethanol Plant List. The project entails our entire staff contacting and verifying ethanol plant projects that are anywhere in the process between concept and construction. If you’re a proposed project, let us know about it. We’d enjoy hearing from you.

The 2008 list featured updates on 118 projects representing nearly 8 billion gallons of annual capacity. It will be interesting to see what this year’s list turns up. We’re starting with more than 400 contacts, which will get whittled down significantly over the course of the next few weeks.

The 2008 list remains the No. 1 most-read article in the 11-year history of the publication. Why is it so popular? One reason is because there are so few comprehensive sources of the information. The second is likely because people want to see who’s up to what in the industry? The list has shown us some interesting trends in the past, and this year will likely be more of the same.

Keep an eye out for the 2009 version of the Proposed Plant List in the April issue. In the meantime, here’s the link to the 2008 list: http://www.ethanolproducer.com/issue.jsp?issue_id=81

-Dave Nilles