Michael Blickenstaff

Michael grew up in the Lafayette, Indiana area. After high school he received a full ride to play football at Mesa St. in Grand Junction Colorado. He became a professional Firefighter and Paramedic for the Lafayette area. In 1977, he worked for A.E. Staley, a corn processing company that made high fructose corn syrup. In 1982 they started up a Loudon, TN Plant, which was his first taste of making Ethanol occurred. He was on the startup crew that started the plant and trained all the new employees. He was transferred to Decatur, Ill, to strengthen the management team during a union labor dispute. At that time the company locked out 1200 union hourly employees. He traveled to London England and worked on new technology for their new Ethanol/corn processing plant in Iowa. He also worked in starting up a new plant in Alabama that made Splenda too. After 30 years with this company he retired to have the ability to work just in the Fuel Ethanol business. Michael was the plant manager over the first Ethanol plant in the state of California. He then became the owner’s rep for an ICM/Fagan 100 mgy plant out of West Tennessee. He hired the whole staff and started the GPRE plant in Obion, TN. Michael then got the opportunity to work for a company that wanted to build a plant in Jamaica for 6 months. With the unrest of Jamaica's government, he decided to return to the states. Shortly after returning in the summer of 2009, Michael joined our Conestoga team as the Arkalon Plant Production Manager. He has two kids and a grandson that all live in his home town. Michael is a big Tennessee Vols., Tennessee Titans fan. He has rode (motorcycle) in every state in United States except Alaska and Hawaii. He is a big NASCAR fan, go JR. 88, loves to snowboard and enjoys a nice day at the shooting range.