Vercipia plant to cost $300 million

More details about the Vercipia biofuels plant were revealed Tuesday when a $1.64 million Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development grant was awarded to Highlands County Department of Economic Development.

The grant will buy about 2,000 feet of acceleration and deceleration lanes along State Road 70, near the community of Brighton. Sixty cars and forty trucks are expected to travel the road each day.

To get the grant, the company - a 50-50 partnership between BP and Verenium - stated it is investing $300 million, and that it will hire 70 full-time employees who will average $70,000 annually.

The plant will use energy cane to produce ethanol, the application said. However, the company is also known to be examining the use of grasses, grains and jatropha beans.

"The facility will require 400,000 dry tons of feedstock annually," the document said.

"The facility and farm, when completed, will ... inject over $14 million per year into the agribusiness of the local community," the document said. The combined plant and the farms would employ 140 workers.

Lykes Brothers will also have a biomass farm with an estimated cost of $30 million. In a plan revised in February 2007, Verenium was still deciding whether that farm would be in Florida, Texas or Louisiana.

The 275,000 square-foot plant will be in operation by December 2011, the grant application said. However, it also said construction will begin in December 2009. Tim Eves, a vice president for Highlands Ethanol, which will operate the plant, told the county commissioners that construction would begin in August 2010, and that 70 employees would be hired.

Construction would take 24 months and cost $215 million, the document said, and would employ 400 workers.