CORNWALL – Seaway Grain Processors are preparing a response to a letter from vice president Bliss Baker, of the Greenfield ethanol project at Johnstown. (Greenfield letter is on page 6.)

Greenfield, the former Commercial Alcohol, with Ontario plants at Chatham (affiliated with Sunoco) and Tiverton, as well as in Verennes, Quebec, just south of Montreal, sent a letter to the news media before Christmas, offering Seaway Valley Energy Co-operative, the more than 2,000 shareholders in the corn-fed ethanol project, an opportunity to put their money in the Greenfield project, just east of Prescott.

Seaway Grain Processors president Alain Leduc says that the media got that letter before the Seaway co-operative board did. But the money to be made in ethanol is in ownership of the plant, not in buying minor shares in a larger plant, which is like buying a Nortel stock, he said. The Seaway project gives farmers full ownership from day one but if they all put their money into another plant they’d still have a minority position, which would mean small dividends at year end and no control, he said. He noted that it took Greenfield 12 years to get the Montreal plant (affiliated with Petro-Can) started, which is expected to start producing ethanol in February. The about 600 farmers who bought into that project have bought the right to sell to that plant, earning a premium based on U.S. cost of replacement corn. A producer purchased a right to ship 127 tonnes (5,000 bushels) at a cost of $3,000. Greenfield is clearing land across the road from the Prescott Elevator on the bank of the St. Lawrence River for a new ethanol plant and says construction will begin in March.

There were seven proposed ethanol plants for Ontario in 2006. One was built, a 200-litre Suncor plant in Sarnia.