FEW: 'Where Producers Meet'
More than 2,000 people will gather in St. Louis for the 29th Annual International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo.
St. Louis introduced the world to the first cast-iron dome, the first skyscraper and launched the historic Lewis and Clark expedition. With a rich history of innovation and discovery, it is little wonder that the 29th Annual International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo will make its home in St. Louis.
More than 2,000 industry professionals are expected to attend the FEW, which will be headquartered at the America’s Center in downtown St. Louis June 10-13. Nearly one-fourth of the attendees will be ethanol producers, who, last year, represented 87 percent of U.S. production capacity. All seven Canadian provinces were represented along with 41 U.S. states and 33 countries.
“As the international ethanol industry’s leading production-oriented event, the FEW truly lives up to its mantra, ‘Where Producers Meet,’” says Tom Bryan, president of BBI International and editor-in-chief of Ethanol Producer Magazine. “Plant employees, managers and board members attend the FEW because it’s built around their needs. The agenda is rich with content aimed at helping them run their facilities more efficiently and more profitably, and the expo is full of industry service providers and equipment manufacturers eager to talk to plant personnel about new technology and solutions.”
Tour Highlights
The FEW goes beyond the expo and workshops to include networking opportunities during golfing and a newly-expanded-to-two-day offering of industry tours. The golf outing at the Gateway National Golf Links requires preregistration. On the first day of the conference attendees will have the chance to see the state-of-the-art Bunge-SCF Grain Elevator on the Mississippi River in Fairmont City, Ill. The terminal can handle approximately 300 truck deliveries per day and boasts 1 million bushels of grain storage capacity. That afternoon, the tour buses will cross the river to Monsanto’s campus at Chesterfield, Mo., where participants will learn about the breadth of the company’s work from seed genetics to the entomology of a corn field.
Tour participants on the final day of the FEW will be joining in a celebration of 10 years of research at the National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center on the Southern Illinois University campus in Edwardsville, Ill. Over its decade in existence, nearly 50 different technologies now found in the ethanol industry have passed through the facility. NCERC is lining up a special program with speakers from the National Corn Growers Association, the American Coalition for Ethanol, Renewable Fuels Association and others. Additionally, the tour will feature the center’s analytical and fermentation labs, the pilot-scale ethanol plant on site and will include a look at two feedstock programs and a mini-exposition showcasing the latest equipment in corn production.
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