Abengoa hires Ocean Park Advisors to find buyer for Kansas plant

Bankrupt Spanish bioenergy company Abengoa’s US unit has hired Ocean Park Advisors to find a buyer or investor for its cellulosic ethanol plant in Hugoton, Kansas.

The Hugoton plant produced ethanol from plant fibres and was supposed to be a technological advance over producing ethanol from corn or other grain, reports The Wichita Eagle newspaper.

The facility operated for about a year before being shut down about nine months ago.

Ocean Park Advisors is a corporate finance advisory firm with experience in mergers and acquisitions in the renewable fuels industry.

Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass of Kansas is among the first large-scale, second-generation cellulosic ethanol plants in the US.

Located on 400 acres, the site consists of a state-of-the-art cellulosic ethanol biorefinery with an integrated, biomass-to-electric power generation plant and a wastewater treatment plant.

The design capacity is 25 million gallons per year of denatured fuel ethanol and 21MW of electrical power a year.