Nov. 7--Harold Newman, 76, of Jamestown, N.D., is one of North Dakota's premier businessmen, and one of the state's pioneers in the making of ethanol.

A native of Mayville, N.D., Newman got an industrial arts degree from the Minnesota State University-Moorhead in 1956. Instead of taking a teaching career, he started a highway advertising sign company in Jamestown.

Today, Newman Signs is the 10th-largest sign-making and sign-printing company in America.

In 1982, Newman and a group of investors bought a potato processing plant in Grafton, N.D., and converted it to ethanol. In 1993 he became the primary owner of Alchem Ltd., which since was mothballed.

In 2006, he announced plans to build a 100-million-gallon ethanol plant as part of an energy park near Spiritwood, N.D. In 2009, because of a poor ethanol economic climate, he abandoned that project.

Newman spoke about ethanol with Agweek magazine reporter Mikkel Pates.

Q. How did you get into the ethanol business?

A. The plant initially was a Borden Foods Co. potato flake plant. The Alchem Ltd. plant was built in 1982 and initially was designed to use cull potatoes as a source to convert to alcohol. It was designed to be a 4-million-gallon plant capacity at the start.

There were 10 stockholders, all of whom were in that area except for myself. Each of us put in $10,000, initially. But we could never get the effluent (waste) problem solved, so we had to switch to corn.

Actually, we tried some barley because the corn was higher-priced. The barley worked, but it was hard on the equipment -- too abrasive.

The company was always -- in my judgment -- underfunded, undercapitalized. We got a $10 million loan to keep it going until 1997, then at a 10-million-gallon capacity. Then, corn got to $4.50 a bushel, so we couldn't keep it open anymore.

In the meantime, the corporation had incurred $675,000 in debt to farmers for grain. I put $1 million into the plant in about 1993 -- paid off the farmers, and we got it going again.

Q. Was ethanol a profitable business then?

A. For a short duration in 2006 -- actually, about three-year period from 2004 to 2006 -- it was very good, because a federal government had outlawed methanol, which is supposedly going into people's drinking water. The oil companies had to substitute something, and that was ethanol.

Q. It was just over two years ago that your company announced it would temporarily close the Grafton, N.D., plant. You said that it would reopen when it was "economically feasible." What happened?

A. We needed an upgrading quite badly.