The Andersons to Buy Ethanol Producer Harvestone Low Carbon Partners for $915 Million
The Andersons, Inc. (Nasdaq: ANDE) has agreed to buy Harvestone Low Carbon Partners (HLCP) for $915 million, according to the company's announcement on PR Newswire. The seller is Energy Capital Partners, which agreed to sell HLCP to The Andersons, as Energy Capital Partners' own release states. This is a signed agreement, not a completed transaction.
The deal adds three ethanol production facilities in North Dakota and Indiana. Those plants have approximately 215 million gallons of annual production capacity, per Investing.com's report. Ethanol is the grain-based alcohol blended into most U.S. gasoline. Capacity is the volume a plant can produce in a year at full rated output, not what it actually makes in any given period.
Dividing the price by capacity gives roughly $4.26 per gallon of annual nameplate capacity. It is a crude yardstick. It ignores utilization rates, crush margins (the spread between corn costs and the value of ethanol and co-products), feedstock costs, co-products such as distillers grains, and the age and condition of each plant. Anyone modeling the deal will need asset-level detail that a headline number leaves out.
HLCP's own materials describe a business built around low-carbon fuel. The company says it buys locally grown corn to produce American-made fuel. Its LinkedIn page identifies Blue Flint as a 73 million gallon per year biorefinery that HLCP owns. The Blue Flint figure is a separate asset description and should not be read as one of the three plants the Andersons is buying unless the deal documents say so.
The carbon angle has a financing record behind it. In September 2024, HLCP and Bank of America closed a $205 million tax equity financing for carbon capture and sequestration, the process of capturing carbon dioxide at a plant and storing it underground. ESG Dive reported the transaction, and Energy Capital Partners issued its own release the same month. That financing is more than two years old. It does not tell us what the acquirer will pay for the carbon-reduction component of the business, or whether that component is included in the $915 million at all.
For sector watchers, the central question is what the Andersons is paying for. A standard ethanol plant earns a margin that swings with corn, natural gas, and gasoline prices. A low-carbon fuel platform generates cash flows that depend heavily on policy credits and on whether its carbon-intensity scores hold up under scrutiny. The announcement names both sides of that equation, but the price alone cannot separate them.
In my view, ANDE shareholders should pay close attention to the gap between what the agreement fixes and what the assets will earn. The price is set in the contract, while the earnings contribution is not. That gap is where most of the analysis will sit once the company provides more detail. The announcement does not say how the deal will be financed or how it will show up in the company's results. Those are the points I would examine first.
Put together, a Nasdaq-listed grain and fuel company has agreed to pay $915 million for an ethanol producer with roughly 215 million gallons of annual capacity across two states. That producer carries a low-carbon identity and a 2024 carbon capture financing. Whether the price reflects the capacity, the carbon profile, or both is a question the market will answer over time.
