A unique international business has been flourishing in Webster County since 2013.

CJ Bio America has a major facility west of Fort Dodge in the ag industrial park called Iowa’s Crossroads of Global Innovation, and it is growing. A $20 million expansion was formally launched last week with a ribbon cutting ceremony. It is the second expansion of the plant, which started production in November 2013.

CJ Bio America receives fermented dextrose from the Cargill plant next door and uses it to make amino acids that are added to livestock feed. It also makes a liquid soil amendment. The new expansion will enable it to make more of an amino acid called granular threonine.

Before the just completed expansion, the company was making 150,000 metric tons a year of amino acids. That figure will only grow.

The company employs about 220 people.

But the impact of CJ Bio America is much greater than that which can be measured in various economic metrics. The company and its employees quickly immersed themselves in the work of supporting the Fort Dodge and Webster County community that welcomed them just about a decade ago.

The company is part of a much larger business called CJ CheilJedang based in Seoul, South Korea. The people of South Korea are eternally grateful to the American veterans who fought in the 1950-1953 Korean War and saved their country from being conquered by communist North Korea. That shows in some of the things CJ Bio America has done. The company has paid to send Korean War veterans on the Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight trips to Washington, D.C. It has donated a Korean War memorial that was placed in the Terry Moehnke Veterans Memorial Park.

The company paid to update the 1960s vintage kitchen in the Fort Dodge firehouse,

CJ Bio America is truly a good corporate citizen. It produces quality products that have a beneficial impact on the nation’s food supply. It employs local people and does business with local companies. And if that isn’t enough, it pitches in in various ways to make the community a better place to live.

Thank you CJ Bio America. We hope you are part of our community for decades to come.