of a Lifetime
T
homas Edison noted that opportunity is
missed by most people because it’s dressed
in overalls and looks like work.
Jeff Broin is not most people. The POET CEO owes
his success to a mindset of seizing opportunities
and a disposition to embrace challenges in order
to overcome them, even when the odds seem
insurmountable. “Every time I saw an opportunity,
I’ve tried to find a way to capitalize on it,” said Broin.
His conviction has propelled POET from a single
ethanol refinery in South Dakota to one of the
world’s largest producers of ethanol and various
biorefined products.
POET’s and Broin’s trajectory began in 1987 when
the family purchased a foreclosed ethanol plant in
Scotland, South Dakota. “It was a bad time finan-
cially for agriculture,” recalled Broin, who helped
rebuild the plant. Earlier, the Broins built a small
farm-scale plant in southeast Minnesota that was a
stepping stone to learning the production process
and economics of making ethanol. “Dad was look-
ing to add another farm enterprise to add value to
our corn.” The Scotland plant succeeded, which led
to the development of a construction company as
well as management and marketing companies and
the creation of dozens of ethanol production plants
across the Midwest. “We started with one 1-million-
gallon-per-year plant and ended up with 1.8 billion
gallons of production today through the buildout of
multiple plants,” said Broin, who served as the first
plant’s general manager.
Kenya trip for Seeds of Change (crop/yield
improvements). Broin and David Priest.
SPRING 2017
The farm crisis of the 1980s had a profound effect
on Broin, and it continues to guide his commitment
to America’s farmers and rural communities. When
Broin got into the ethanol business, banks didn’t
support ethanol ventures, insurance companies
didn’t want to insure production plants, and
politicians didn’t embrace the fledgling industry.
“There had been a wave of bankruptcies in the
early years of ethanol, so it was an uphill battle,
especially in the 1980s,” Broin explained. “Ethanol
was a bad word to many people who thought the
industry would never succeed.”
Broin helped ethanol prevail, thanks to smart busi-
ness management and a commitment to bring the
farmer-owner ethanol plant model to rural America.
Broin and his team began building production facil-
ities for others in the 1990s. “It’s a higher calling to
help people,” Broin said.
For years, he maintained a grueling schedule,
traveling to some of the Midwest’s most remote
regions, inviting farmers and others to invest in etha-
nol plants. “Farmers were hurting due to low com-
modity prices, and small towns needed economic
development,” Broin remembered. “We’ve created
financial opportunity for our 6,000 farmer-investors
and we raised more than $500 million in equity over
15 years, which resulted in over $2 billion in capital
investment in rural America.
(continued next page)
Alyssa, Miranda, Tammie, Jeff Broin dine in
Keyna with Mission Greenhouse partners.
Broin at the 2017 Executive
Leadership Conference.
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