Incobrasa evolved with market shifts

GILMAN, Ill. — When Incobrasa Industries put its first shovel in the ground in the mid-1990s, crushing facilities were few and far between in the nation’s top soybean-producing state.

The company has since ridden the ups and downs as it evolved to meet the needs of both farmers and end-users through investments and advancements in technologies and markets.

Today, Incobrasa processes an average of 120,000 bushels of soybeans per day, utilizing soybeans from within about a 50-mile radius of the plant.

The 40 million-plus bushels of soybeans annually are used to produce meal, vegetable oil, biodiesel and several other byproducts.

Kerry Fogarty, Incobrasa quality control manager and native of Dwight in northeast Illinois, joined the then-young facility as a lab manager over Labor Day weekend in 1997, when it operated only as a soybean crusher.

“We struggled for those first years. The soybean crushing plant was actually only operational about half the time during those first two years. The crush margins just weren’t there,” he said.

Incobrasa began to look toward other opportunities in its business plan and started transitioning to the diverse facility that it is today. The refinery went online in 2001.

“We were able to sustain the operation through about 2004, 2005, and then, again, the market starts kind of fading on us, but fortunately for us, biodiesel came along about the same time,” Fogarty said.

A packaging facility for food-grade vegetable oil went online in 2004.

“In 2006, we started building a biodiesel process. It came online in January of 2007, and it’s been the operational ever since,” Fogarty said.

“Since we have an outlet for the oil that we produce with the crushing plant through the biodiesel, we’ve increased the crush capacity of the plant. We had started out as 27 million bushels per year in 1997. Then we bumped it up to 40 million bushels in about 2019 because there was a huge demand for the oil that was out there through the biodiesel programs.”

Expansion

Construction is underway that will increase production capabilities from 40 million bushels to 98 million bushels annually and expanding its market for soybean growers to a 80-mile radius.

The new soybean crushing plant will ramp the capacity to 300,000 bushels per day, and biodiesel production will double to 75 million gallons annually.

“With the larger processing plant, we’ll be able to take advantage of all these soybeans that are still available in central Illinois,” Fogarty said.

“About half of our soybeans go down the river and get sold overseas. Our idea is that we want to bring those here, process those soybeans here and keep it in-house.

“On average day, we do about 200 semis of soybeans per day. Those soybeans come from within about a 50-mile radius of the plant. In the fall, a lot of them come here in trucks and then the rest of the year most of it comes in by railcar.

“Even though they’re coming in by a railcar, they might only be coming from 20 miles away like Fairbury down the road. We sit on a little short line railroad that has elevators scattered every 10 miles. We get soybeans from all of those places.”

The expansion also includes a solar farm to provide energy to the new plant and additional railcars along with a new loop rail track.

With the continued increased competition in the global soybean market, focus continues to ramp up on domestic uses.

“That’s kind of an added bonus to this is to keep that processing here, because we don’t know what the foreign market’s going to be like for that. We have the ability to crush them and use that here,” Fogarty said.

“It is assuming we have a strong biodiesel policy in place at the same time. With the crush capacity and all of the crush facilities that are coming online, they’re going to be dependent on a strong biodiesel policy in this country.”

Byproducts

Through the foresight of Incobrasa founder Renato Ribeiro, the company has expanded to offer numerous byproducts from soybeans.

“Eighty percent of the soybean goes out as meal and 20% is oil,” Fogarty said. “We have the meal, there are hulls and there are some valuable dust, for lack of a better word, that gets sold as a byproduct, as well, in animal feed. It goes out as pellets.

“We have biodiesel. The refining process creates soap stock. We have to remove the free fatty acids that are in the crude soybean oil in that process. It’s the most raw form of soap there is, but we call it soap stock, and it has some caloric value, so it gets sold and mixed as animal feed. They don’t eat it as 100% of their diet, but it gets sold and mixed with other stuff as animal feed.

“Glycerine is a byproduct of the biodiesel production, as well. About 10% of the weight of the oil that goes into biodiesel comes out as glycerin.

“Now, we have methanol and vegetable oil, and we come out with glycerin and biodiesel and in kind of not equal parts, but that 10% is the same for each one.

“Then there’s a very small side commodity that we sell that comes out of the refining process to make vegetable oil. It’s where all the vitamin E and sterols that are in vegetable oil are. They get entrained in what’s called deodorizer distillate. That gets sold, as well. We don’t make very much of that, but it’s the highest dollar per pound thing that we have on site because it has all the vitamin E, that kind of stuff.”

Vegetable oil produced and packaged at Incobrasa is sold as a Long Life product at Dollar General stores.