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but the school has lost some students to high-paying jobs in western North Dakota's oil fields.
• Dakota State University President David Borofsky said the computer-oriented school in Madison gained eight students, putting enrollment at 3,110. DSU benefited from a gain in transfers from other schools, he said.
• South Dakota's four technical institutes also reported an enrollment gain of nearly 3 percent, with a record 6,250 students attending the schools in Sioux Falls, Watertown, Mitchell and Rapid City.
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Biobutanol firm to shift to ethanol in short-term
DIRK LAMMERS,Associated Press
• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- A next-generation biofuels company says it's suspending plans to produce isobutanol from corn at its Minnesota plant and will instead make ethanol in the near term while it tweaks its process.
• Englewood, Colo.-based Gevo Inc. had hoped that its Luverne, Minn., plant would be producing 1 million gallons of isobutanol per month by the end of the year. The industrial chemical can be used as an additive to gasoline, plastics and paints.
• Pat Gruber, Gevo's chief executive, said the plant will likely start making isobutanol sometime in 2013.
• "With these startups with new technologies, you always have to learn a lot in a very short period of time, both what works well and what needs to be tweaked," Gruber said during a Monday afternoon conference call.
• Gevo made the announcement late Monday. On Tuesday, its shares plunged $1.17 cents, or 35 percent, to $2.14 per share.
• The pushed-back timetable will also delay the conversion of a South Dakota corn ethanol plant.
• Redfield Energy is teaming with Gevo to convert a 50 million gallon-per-year ethanol plant in Redfield to a 40 million gallon-per-year biobutanol plant using the same 18 million bushels of corn a year.
• Tom Hitchcock, CEO of Redfield Energy, said the co-op was expecting a year-and-a-half ago to be producing isobutanol in the fourth quarter of this year. He said the announcement likely will push back Redfield's timetable into 2014.
• Redfield board members learned about the delay during a conference call with Gevo Tuesday morning.
• "Our board has been patient in this process knowing that they've got to get it right at Luverne first before we want them to come over here and spend a whole (Continued on page 25)
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