By Gianna Njau
PEKIN, Ill. (25 News) – A Pekin-based company is partnering on a major project along the Illinois River that could improve the way various products move.
For more than 150 years, Alto Ingredients, a global producer of bio-based alcohols, has operated along the Illinois River in Pekin. The company is now looking to improve the flow of products from its campus to the river.
The hope is that the multi-million-dollar coalition will also create new opportunities for future growth.
“It will relieve significant constraints where we’re using trucks to move product. It’ll allow us to have additional storage for staging and preparation for putting product on the river. It will allow us to open it up for third parties to bring product in and transfer that to the river as well,” said Todd Benton, chief operating officer of Alto Ingredients.
The project is called the Heart of Illinois Port District Agricultural Export Facility Efficiency Project.
A port district is a local government organization that helps improve ports and the river system so businesses can move more products and potentially bring more jobs to the area.
“Products that we produce, both on the alcohol and the feed ingredient side, go onto a barge on the Illinois River and go out through the Gulf of Mexico to the export market. We will be doing more of that and the opportunity will now be extended to others to do that as well,” Benton said.
The project is priced at just over $16 million. Alto Ingredients, the port district, and the City of Pekin are working together to fund it successfully.
The Heart of Illinois Port District is applying for an $11 million federal grant, while City of Pekin Economic Development Director Josh Wray said the city also requested $1 million from the state. Alto Ingredients would cover around $4 million.
The project also includes opportunities for Illinois’ agriculture industry.
“This project is going to open up opportunities for other businesses. If it’s a steel business or another agricultural-based business that’s in the area, they want to come and locate in Pekin because there is a port right next door that they will be able to use,” said Wray
“We sit in the heart of the deep agricultural region. We are the largest soybean producer, we’re the second largest corn producer that we use in our feed stock. There’s a tremendous amount of agriculture in our area and it is a competitive advantage for geography to be here and to have access to that,” Benton said.
The company could learn whether it receives the federal grant by the end of the year. If approved, the project could be completed around 2029.
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