Ethanol Blog

LINCOLN, Neb. (DTN) -- A now-defunct 35-million-gallon ethanol plant operated by Quad County Corn Processors in Galva, Iowa, is hitting the auction block.

KSCJ radio in Sioux City, Iowa, reported in May that the company's lender, Lincoln Savings Bank, initiated foreclosure proceedings earlier this year after the company was unable to pay back about $26 million in loans.

Maas Companies, an equipment auction and liquidation company based in California, announced on Wednesday that it will hold a sealed bid auction of the plant and other related assets.

The ethanol plant sits on 31 acres and features 3.7-million-bushels of grain storage. Also up for sale is 35 acres of commercial development land that is currently generating rental income as active farmland, according to a news release.

The corporate headquarters in downtown Galva is up for sale, along with the transload rail logistics hub in Cherokee, Iowa.

Quad County was sued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2022. The EPA alleged the company secretly changed its production process in 2015 by mixing non-cellulosic corn starch into its cellulosic ethanol production stream without telling the agency about the change.

As a result, the EPA alleged, the company failed to apply required accounting equations and fraudulently generated more D3 cellulosic renewable identification numbers than it was entitled to under the Renewable Fuel Standard. Though the lawsuit was settled, a consent decree with the EPA was terminated after the company proved it was unable to meet required financial obligations under the settlement.

Quad County had been working with EPA dating back to at least 2010 to get corn kernel fibers to be classified as a cellulosic material.

The process of converting the kernel fiber to ethanol also means extracting more oil as well as increasing the protein content of dry distilled grains. The fiber content of the DDGs would obviously be decreased.

The plant was idled in December 2024 following a mechanical failure and the company later laid off more than 40 employees in 2025 because of an ongoing shutdown.

Late in 2025, Quad County negotiated a settlement on a lawsuit filed by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources on previous Clean Air Act violations, reducing the amount owed from $6 million to $100,000.

Quad County initially broke ground on the ethanol plant in December 2000 and doubled its production capacity from 18 million gallons per year to 35 million gallons.

Todd Neeley can be reached at todd.neeley@dtn.com

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