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CJ keeps making lysine, fertilizer; Cargill continues corn milling operation

CJ Bio America is entering its fourth year of producing lysine and fertilizer in Webster County.

Those products are made in a plant in the industrial park west of Fort Dodge called Iowa’s Crossroads of Global Innovation. It opened in November 2013.

About 190 people work there.

The plant receives dextrose from the nearby Cargill Inc. facility and uses it to produce the amino acid lysine, which is used in poultry and hog feed. The plant is capable of churning out 110,000 metric tons of lysine annually.

About 70,000 metric tons of liquid fertilizer is also made there each year.

In 2015, a $1.3 million warehouse was added to the complex.

The company is part of CJ CheilJeDang, based in South Korea.

Cargill came to Webster County by buying a partially built plant in 2011 and turning it into a wet corn milling facility.

Construction of the current Cargill plant in the Iowa Crossroads of Global Innovation industrial park west of Fort Dodge was started by Tate & Lyle in 2006. But that company sold it to Cargill for $57 million in 2011 before it was completed.

The new owner renovated it to create the current facility. Production there began on Oct. 29, 2013.

When operating at full capacity, the consumes 150,000 bushels of corn a day.

From that corn, the plant produces dextrose, ethanol, feed for cattle, corn gluten meal fed to poultry, corn germ and a molasses like substance called corn steep liquor.

Cargill employs about 160 people. An additional 90 people who work for various contractors are also at the site daily.

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