Pacific Ethanol Retires $17M in Debt

OAKHURST, N.J. (DTN) -- Pacific Ethanol, Inc. on Tuesday, March 1, announced it has paid in cash and retired the remaining $17.0 million in consolidated plant debt related to its West Coast production facilities. The final payment was made at par, with the lender waiving the pre-payment penalty.

"Retiring the remaining $17.0 million in debt obligations related to our Pacific Ethanol West Plants is an important milestone for the company," Neil Koehler, Pacific Ethanol's president and CEO. "Our ability to retire the legacy plant debt using cash reflects our strengthening financial position over the past several years. In addition, by lowering our consolidated debt balance we are significantly reducing our overall cost of capital, and thus improving future earnings."

Pacific Ethanol owns and operates eight ethanol production facilities, four in the western states of California, Oregon, and Idaho, and four in the Midwestern states of Illinois, and Nebraska. The plants have a combined production capacity of 515 million gallons per year, produce over one million tons per year of ethanol coproducts such as wet and dry distillers grains, wet and dry corn gluten feed, condensed distillers solubles, corn gluten meal, corn germ, corn oil, distillers yeast and C02.

Pacific Ethanol markets and distributes ethanol and coproducts domestically and internationally. Pacific Ethanol's subsidiary, Kinergy Marketing LLC, markets all ethanol for the Pacific Ethanol plants as well as for third parties, with over 800 million gallons of ethanol marketed annually based on historical volumes. Pacific Ethanol's subsidiary Pacific Ag, Products LLC, markets wet and dry distillers grains.

(BM/AG)

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