(LANSING) – New jobs along with some new technology are coming to Constantine.

On Tuesday, Governor Gretchen Whitmer joined the Michigan Economic Development Corporation in announcing Michigan Strategic Fund approval of a new dairy processing facility in the Village of Constantine. The facility will reduce the carbon footprint of dairy by-products. The project is expected to create 12 well paying jobs and generate a total capital investment of $41.1 million.

Michigan was chosen for the project, Dairy Distillery Alliance, LLC, over a competing site in Indiana.

Dairy Distillery Alliance, LLC is a joint venture between Michigan Milk Producers Association and Dairy Distillery, USA. MMPA is a farmer-owned cooperative that includes more than 1,000 dairy farmers in the Great Lakes Region, and has a facility in Constantine. Dairy Distillery is a Canadian company that has developed technology to transform milk permeate, a by-product of milk and other dairy processing, into ethanol.

The plan is to build a milk permeate ethanol plant at the Constantine facility. The plant will use Constantine’s milk permeate to produce 2.2 million gallons of low carbon ethanol. When blended with transportation fuel, the permeate ethanol will offset 14,000 metric tons of carbon emissions, lowering the carbon footprint of the milk processed at Constantine by 5%.

The project includes the construction of a new, state-of-the-art wastewater treatment system that will produce natural gas to power the ethanol plant’s distillation system, further lowering the carbon footprint of the milk permeate ethanol. The output of the wastewater system will be a clean water stream that will eliminate Constantine’s dependence on the local utility to treat its processed waste.

The plant is scheduled to start production in early 2025. The Michigan Strategic Fund approved a $2 million Michigan Business Development Program performance-based grant and a 15 year State Essential Services Assessment exemption valued at $682,500 in support of the project.