Plastic plant representing a $7.5 billion investment to be built in southeast Nebraska

Dec. 13, 2024, 6 a.m. ·

Falls City Mural
A mural in Falls City. (Nebraska Public Media News file photo)

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Lucas Froeschl: Since July of 2023 we've been talking with the leaders of Citroniq to let them know all the things we have in place. We've got a housing development in place. We've got 1,000 acres south of town. This was a way to try to make Falls City investable. And it's been, you know, 30-35 years since we've really seen any major investments in Falls City. Mopac railroad built Falls City, how do we get back to that?

Dale Johnson: The numbers on this project, Lucas, are just staggering. An estimated $7.5 billion investment, the largest investment that Nebraska has ever seen.

Froeschl: Falls City’s portion is $5 billion. They're going to build a double plant project in Falls City. The other $2.5 billion is another community, perhaps along the Missouri River somewhere, that will be announced at possibly a later time.

Johnson: There was a time when Falls City was considered to be way out of its league in securing a project like this. What changed?

Froeschl: Gov. Pillen has implemented the Nebraska bioeconomy Initiative. He's hired a special consultant, and it's all about rural communities. It's all about good paying jobs in those rural communities. It's about corn. It's about livestock. How do we capitalize on our assets? The Union Pacific Railroad, unique for Falls City. We also have the BNSF railroad, not accessible from the site, but there could possibly be a path. If you've got both major class one railroads in your backyard, there's a lot of developers that are very, very hungry for that

Johnson: Falls City is just over 4,000 people. You're looking at 2,000 workers coming in for at least a three-year period while this plant is being built. Talk about that dynamic and the infrastructure necessary to handle that number.

Froeschl: So we've been talking with developers. Are these all kind of union employees that travel around, that build these things, you know, are they just kind of hired on the spot? Will they bring RVs, do we just need to build, you know, pads that maybe have access to some sewer and some water? Met with a developer last week, he's got a plan to set aside a few acres, you know, dig up the nice topsoil, set that aside for three years, and put in kind of, maybe these mobile housing units where maybe there's kind of a public shower system in the middle of it. There are bathrooms, and then possibly containers where someone could live in a house, or are they just going to have their own RVs? These are all kind of unknowns that we're curious, we should find out over the next about six to eight weeks.

Johnson: What will be the environmental footprint of this Citroniq plant?

Froeschl: It's a total green-energy project. They're using ethanol as the feedstock. Some of the wastes that go into this are minimal to the environment. It's going to be clean water that the way I understand it could be just pumped back into the Nemaha River that is just north of the site, which feeds the Missouri River 10 miles down the road. The emissions of this plant are characterized as maybe a large retail store or a hospital. There's no odor. There is going to be a large rail infrastructure. And so, you know what is currently high-producing cropland in southeast Nebraska will be turned into more of an industrial, you know, viewing complex, but the act, the benefit, the trickle down benefit to the businesses in town, to the communities, to the families that are there, access for our youth to high paying jobs. The plant’s fully automatic, and so really it's fully automated. You just need folks like maintenance techs, engineers, perhaps some welders. There might be some chemists trickled in there. They just need skilled professionals to keep the machines running.

Johnson: To be clear, the environmental shine is the fact that ethanol is being used to produce these polypropylene pellets.

Froeschl: That's correct.

Johnson: That would be an environmental substitute for the use of an oil product to produce the polypropylene pellets.

Froeschl: That's correct. Yeah, the decarbonization effort here is that they're capturing the carbon into the pellet. The goal is to decarbonize the domestic car market by 20%. Most of the customers that they've been soliciting are kind of in the Rust Belt, Chicago, Western Pennsylvania. They're going to bring in the ethanol on rail cars. They're going to ship out the pellets on hopper cars, and they're going to go to the northeast.

Johnson: Talk about the solar farm component to this project.

Froeschl: Corporate America is ready to decarbonize. This is what they're going after. And so we were open to this, anything that could help build up the megawatts, to try to attract, you know, a project like this.

Johnson: What did Citroniq ask for in return?

Froeschl: Citroniq has not asked for anything. They have not asked for any community concessions. They are not asking for a handout from Nebraska communities. And that's really what the Nebraska Bioeconomy Initiative is all about.

Johnson: This is an exciting project, great for Nebraska's economy, and we will continue to follow in your shadow, if you don't mind?

Froeschl: Please do. It's fun to talk about.

Johnson: Joining me for the conversation today is Lucas Froeschl, Executive Director of the Falls City Economic Development and Growth Enterprise to find out about this huge project that's going on near Falls City, Nebraska. I'm Dale Johnson, Nebraska Public Media News.