PEKIN, Ill.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alex Toro has been named director of engineering for Aventine Renewable Energy Inc., to lead the engineering departments of the company’s four ethanol plants. These include a 100-million-gallon wet mill and a 60-million-gallon dry mill in Pekin, Illinois. In Aurora, Nebraska, Aventine operates a 110-million-gallon dry mill and a 45-million-gallon dry mill.
Toro serves as a companywide technical resource in all aspects of operations, project engineering, capital investment, environmental compliance, process improvements and expansion projects.
He has extensive experience in the alternative energy field. Most recently as director of process engineering for Solazyme Inc. from 2011 to 2014, his work included serving as the project engineer responsible for engineering, process and construction of a 100,000-million-ton tailored-oils facility in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
He also previously worked for Aventine, then known as Williams Bio Energy, from 1998 to 2011. His positions included serving as senior process engineer, project engineer, engineering manager, and later as plant manager of the ethanol plants in Aurora and Pekin.
Toro began his career in 1996 as a field engineer in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on behalf of TSI Engineering Group of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and from 1999 to 2004 he was a senior process/project engineer with Williams Ethanol Services Inc. in Pekin.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from West Virginia University.
About Aventine
Aventine Renewable Energy, Pekin, Illinois, is a leading producer and marketer of industrial and fuel ethanol and related byproducts, bioproducts and coproducts, including corn gluten feed and meal, corn germ, condensed corn distillers solubles, dried distillers grain with solubles and wet distillers grain with solubles, corn oils and yeast.
