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BUNGE SUED BY SOUTHWEST IOWA RENEWABLE ENERGY OVER ETHANOL DISPUTE
Aug. 2, 2024
by Clark Kauffman, Iowa Capital Dispatch
An Iowa company is suing its marketing partner for $7 million in damages caused by alleged errors in attempting to sell fuel-grade ethanol produced in Iowa and Nebraska.
Southwest Iowa Renewable Energy, or SIRE, is a Council Bluffs-based company that has hundreds of member ethanol producers in Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota and 18 other states. It is suing a Missouri company, Bunge North America, with whom it partnered to sell SIRE-produced ethanol.
SIRE is a dry-mill grain processing facility that each year produces millions of gallons of fuel-grade ethanol from grain that originates in southwest Iowa and southeast Nebraska. Bunge is an agronomic business focused on the purchase, storage and eventual sale of products, including ethanol, within North America.
In the ethanol market, it's common practice for ethanol producers such as SIRE, to contract with ethanol marketers tasked with finding buyers who are willing to purchase the commodity at the highest possible price and then negotiating with rail lines and trucking companies to achieve the lowest possible rates for shipping the ethanol.
In order to do all of that, the lawsuit alleges, ethanol marketers must have expertise related to complicated and ever-changing federal and state renewable fuel standards.
In 2020, SIRE contracted with Bunge to market and sell all of SIRE's ethanol in return for a monthly fee. The lawsuit claims that until November 2022, Bunge successfully marketed SIRE's ethanol though a single Bunge employee, Jeremy Ragan, who was conversant with ethanol buyers and well versed in SIRE's objectives.
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