Al-Corn Clean Fuel selling ethanol for hand sanitizer

As the demand for ethanol for fuel has dropped because of the COVID-19 pandemic ethanol plants throughout the Midwest have seen their markets contract.
Al-Corn Clean Fuel in Claremont has joined those in the industry who have made the decision to add a new product to their business – ethanol for hand sanitizer.
Randy Doyle, CEO of Al-Corn, said as the demand for ethanol for fuel dropped he needed a way to keep the facility working.
“I want to keep everybody working,” he said, “and to keep grinding corn.”
They knew the demand for hand sanitizer was growing and they knew hand sanitizer requires ethanol. The solution, provide the product another industry needed.
The ethanol used in hand sanitizer is not exactly the same as that used in fuel, Doyle said.
The company set up a separate line to make the sanitizer ethanol where the product is distilled differently, Doyle said. “The purity (for hand sanitizer) is a little higher,” he said.
The ethanol used in vehicles does not need to have all the impurities removed, he said, but that used in hand sanitizers must be a pure as possible.
With the new product available, Doyle said, they still had to find buyers.
“I’m spending most of my days looking for sales,” he said.
They have been selling the product to area craft distilleries that have also switched over to a new product. The customers, he said, have included Harmony Spirits in Harmony and Maple Products in Adams.
The Covid-19 pandemic is just the latest challenge the U.S. ethanol industry has faced over the past several years.
Because Americans are now driving less, industry experts estimate a 15 to 20% reduction in gasoline use over the next couple of months. According to a University of Illinois report that could mean that demand for ethanol could drop by 120 to 170 million bushels.
“It’s affecting us, definitely,” Doyle said earlier. “It’s not a secret, people are not driving.”
Even before the pandemic the industry had been suffering from and oil price war, trade dispute and small refinery waivers that had all worked against the industry.
Two bright spots recently have been the administration’s decision not to challenge a ruling by a federal court that curbed the EPA’s ability to exempt oil from bio-fuel blending requirements and the additional need for ethanol to be used in hand sanitizer.