(Lincoln Journal Star) -- For many of the people awaiting the outcome of VeraSun’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy, just about any action had come to seem preferable to no action. Eleven weeks after the nation’s second-largest ethanol producer filed for reorganization, the Sioux Falls, S.D., company announced that seven of its 16 ethanol plants, including those at Ord and Central City, will be made available for auction purchase in March. In exchange for additional debt financing from a lender group led by AgStar Financial Services in Mankato, Minn., the struggling company has agreed to an auction schedule that is open for bids March 16. The projected sale closing date is March 31. Several central Nebraska farmers had thousands of dollars worth of corn under contract for delivery to VeraSun at the time of the bankruptcy; they are welcoming signs of movement. In reacting to Friday’s news, Ord businessman Gaylord Boilesen was gratified to learn employees will continue to be paid at a plant that he helped bring to town. Mark Lakers of Agriculture and Food Associates in Omaha expects “stronger Nebraska ethanol plants to step up and buy another plant.”
