CUSTOMER PROFILE
Rapid City, Pierre & Eastern Railroad
Helps Translate Vision into Reality at Ringneck Energy
Ringneck Energy’s environmentally friendly ethanol business in Onida, South Dakota.
L
SHU T TE R ST O CK BY S MI L EU S
eadership can be defined as the capacity to translate vision into reality. Over the past century, American business has been replete with leaders who match that definition. There have been high-profile leaders, ranging from Henry Ford and Walt Disney to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who built enterprises with global impact. There are also countless business leaders who have turned their visions into reality on a smaller scale, creating jobs and stimulating local economies. You can count Walt Wendland, president and CEO of Onida, South Dakotabased ethanol producer Ringneck Energy, among those. In the summer of 2014, Wendland envisioned building a profitable, environmentally friendly ethanol business in Onida, a town of about 650 people located almost squarely in the center of the state. To succeed in the ethanol marketplace, the business would take advantage
4
of locally grown corn crops as well as the availability of rural water and natural gas to fuel the operation. State-of-the-Art Plant
Wendland foresaw building a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility that would produce 80 million gallons of ethanol annually. The business would stimulate Onida’s economy by using local products, transportation modes and processes whenever possible and provide a safe and rewarding work environment for approximately 40 local employees. The new company would be named after the ring-necked pheasant, the official bird of South Dakota. Wendland’s vision took a step closer to reality in August 2017 when construction began on the manufacturing facility he imagined. It fully came to fruition in April 2019, when the Ringneck Energy plant produced its first gallon of ethanol. All in, the final cost of the plant was $150 million. RCPE Provides Conduit to Markets
A critical element in bringing Wendland’s vision to life was G&W’s Rapid City, Pierre & Eastern Railroad (RCPE), which spans the entire width of South Dakota and then some. The road would be an all-important conduit for moving to market the ethanol produced at Ringneck’s new plant. “RCPE gives us the ability to
