It's Not All Bad News - ADM Ethanol Division Lost $111 Million During Q4 2008 - SF Chronicle

[hatrack]

:evilgrin:

Archer Daniels Midland Co., the third-largest U.S. ethanol producer, said Tuesday that the ethanol business is “challenging” and almost 21 percent of U.S. production capacity has been shut down amid the economic recession. Annual capacity of the fuel additive has declined to 10.2 billion gallons from about 12.9 billion, John Rice, an executive vice president of the Decatur, Ill.-based company, said during a conference call with analysts.

“The ethanol business is still challenging,” Chief Executive Officer Patricia Woertz said during the call. “While we did foresee the overbuilding of some supply a while ago, we did not foresee the depth of this current economic crisis or the decline in gasoline demand.”

Meeting mandates

The grain-based additive is blended with gasoline to stretch supplies and meet federal mandates including the so-called RFS, or renewable fuels standard, which requires the U.S. to use 11.1 billion gallons of biofuels this year.

ADM’s business that includes ethanol and other bioproducts posted a loss of $111 million in the three months through December, compared with a profit of $125 million a year earlier, the company said.

EDIT

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/6245493.html

[Yavapai]

1. Archer Daniels Midland, one of the largest WELFARE QUEENS ever!

[vinylsolution]

2. You just know that these idiots....

.... will be screaming for a bailout of their own, any time now.

[Optical.Catalyst]

3. They will peddle their loss as reason to relax environmental standards.

How can a big agribusiness make any money with out polluting a little?
:sarcasm: