DECATUR, ILL. – Archer Daniels Midland Co. plans to build a 70-million-gallon biodiesel plant in Lloydminster, Alta., that will increase the company’s North American biodiesel production capacity by 50%. Construction should begin in the spring of 2012 and should be completed in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2013.

The biodiesel plant will be adjacent to the company’s canola crushing facility in Lloydminster, which will help optimize ADM’s agricultural origination, transportation and processing assets in Canada.

“The same agricultural processing operations we use to transform canola into oil for food and meal for animal feed also provide ADM with the ability and scale to efficiently produce cleaner-burning, renewable biodiesel,” said Mike Livergood, vice-president of global oleo chemicals for Decatur-based ADM. “This new biodiesel facility will help support canola crush margins and capacity utilization at the facility.”

In March of this year ADM announced plans to double the canola seed receiving capability and storage capacity at the Lloydminster facility.