NATCHEZ — Nine months after former Gov. Haley Barbour introduced an Illinois-based team from Elevance Renewable Sciences to Adams County on a hot June day, work on the ground to prep the former Delta Fuels site for a biorefinery and specialty chemicals operation remains to be seen.

The original proposal predicted construction on the first phase of biorefinery to start in the fourth quarter of 2011. Now, the company projects a proposed start date for the first-phase operations to be in 2013 and cannot provide an estimate of when construction will begin.

Though construction hasn’t been under way, the site has seen more action than it may have ever had when owned by Delta Fuels — the result of a slight change in plans.

Biodiesel production

Two months after Elevance purchased the Adams County port’s neighboring site, the company began producing, in August, biodiesel from soybean oil.

Though Elevance would not give information about where the biodiesel was going, a report the company filed with the Securities Exchange Commission in November says it’s being produced for a Connecticut-based petroleum and petrochemicals company.

Elevance’s Natchez Plant Manager Kevin Diesen said the plant has been running 24 hours a day to produce biodiesel and has hired additional employees adding to the original six workers retained from Delta Fuels.

Diesen, a native of Illinois and former resident of Katy, Texas, was hired and moved to Natchez in November.

Diesen said biodiesel production using the existing Delta Fuels infrastructure gave the company an opportunity to assess the current facility and explore its options for producing biodiesel, in addition to assessing future products at the site. Additionally, biodiesel will provide capital to get the new projects off the ground.

“(The biodiesel production) also (provides) an incremental cash flow while waiting to start construction of the biorefinery,” Diesen said.

He added that production of biodiesel was always part of Elevance’s plans for the Natchez facility, in addition to production of other products.