Almost half the corn-fed fuel ethanol plants in the United States shut down due to reduced demand because of the COVID-19 pandemic, reports AgWeek, but not Tharaldson Ethanol, Casselton, ND.
The company remains fully staffed with 57 employees and plans to continue that. It's been approved for a loan/grant program for small businesses through the Small Business Administration.
Typically the plant would be running about 500,000 gallons a day. It’s an annual rate of about 175 million gallon. The company is not running quite at full capacity, but at a “pretty high rate,” Ryan Thorpe, COO of Tharaldson, told AgWeek.
