A.D.M. to Build Canada's Largest Biodiesel Plant in Alberta

In the world of energy, the Canadian province of Alberta is best known for its enormous oil sands reserves. But soon, it will have another claim to fame:  home of the country's biggest biodiesel plant.

Archer Daniels Midland Company (NYSE: ADM) plans to construct a 70-million gallon biodiesel plant in the city of Lloydminster, Alberta, which straddles the border with Saskatchewan. The facility will help meet requirements mandated by federal government in July that all diesel fuel and heating oil sold in Canada must contain at least 2% biofuel.

Once online, the new plant, to be situated adjacent to the company's existing canola-crushing facility, will raise the agribusiness conglomerate's North American biodiesel production capacity by 50%. Construction of the facility is scheduled to start in spring 2012, and is expected to be operational in the fourth quarter of 2013.

The completed plant will dwarf the current largest such facility, BIOX Corp.'s 67-million liter (nearly 16 million gallons) production plant in Hamilton, Ontario, according to data from the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association.

This fall, A.D.M. broke ground on the largest carbon sequestration project in the world, a million-tonne endeavor that will use captured CO2 to produce ethanol at its corn processing complex in Decatur, Illinois.

Although rising trading revenue on commodities helped it fair much better than the competition in the most recent quarter, the global grain processor's profits sank on skyrocketing corn prices—which have more than doubled in the past year—and poor margins related to oilseed processing.