Pacific Ethanol retires plant term debt

Pacific Ethanol, Inc., a leading producer and marketer of low carbon renewable fuels in the US, announced it has paid in cash and retired the remaining US$17 million in consolidated plant debt related to its West Coast production facilities. The final payment was made at par, with the lender waving the pre-payment penalty.

With the addition of four Midwestern ethanol plants in July 2015, Pacific Ethanol more than doubled the scale of its operations, entered new markets, and expanded its mission to be the industry leader in the production and marketing of low carbon renewable fuels. Pacific Ethanol owns and operates eight ethanol production facilities, four in the Western states of California, Oregon and Idaho, and four in the Midwestern states of Illinois and Nebraska. The plants have a combined production capacity of 515 million gal./y and produce over one million tpy of ethanol co-products, such as wet and dry distillers grains, wet and dry corn gluten feed, condensed distillers solubles, corn gluten meal, corn germ, corn oil, distillers yeast and CO₂.

Neil Koehler, Pacific Ethanol’s President and CEO stated, “Retiring the remaining US$17 million in debt obligations related to our Pacific Ethanol West Plants is an important milestone for the company. Our ability to retire the legacy plant debt using cash reflects our strengthening financial position over the past several years. In addition, by lowering our consolidated debt balance we are significantly reducing our overall cost of capital, and thus improving future earnings.”

Adapted from press release by Francesca Brindle

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/clean-fuels/02032016/pacific-ethanol-retires-17-million-us-dollar-debt-for-west-coast-facilities-2633/