Des Moines RegisterRenessen, a joint venture owned by Cargill Inc. and Monsanto Co., has developed a processing system that will enable dry corn millers to make corn oil and nutrient-rich livestock feed products, Cargill announced Thursday.

The agribusiness giants plan to build a $15 million pilot plant to develop and test the technology, processing high-oil corn, at Cargill`s complex south of Eddyville.

Plans call for groundbreaking in March and for the plant to open in January 2007, with Cargill building and operating it.

In addition, the companies plan to build a full-scale commercial facility employing the technology somewhere in the Midwest, perhaps in Iowa, according to the Iowa Department of Economic Development.

Minneapolis-based Cargill, the nation`s second-largest privately owned company, also is considering constructing a separate $50 million facility that would manufacture materials used in corn wet milling and in oilseed processing.

If approved in May, as expected, the facility would be built in Iowa, perhaps in Eddyville, said Bill Brady, a Cargill spokesman.

On Thursday, the department announced awards for Cargill totaling $230,000 in state financial assistance, as well as state and local tax benefits. The combined projects would create 33 jobs, including 15 at the pilot plant, paying on average $24.18 per hour.

Large-scale processors such as Cargill and Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. use a wet milling process that enables them to make numerous products from corn. Smaller operations, such as the farmer-owned ethanol plants cropping up across Iowa, are typically dry mills limited to production of the corn-based fuel additive and distiller dried grains, which is used for livestock feed.

Established in 1999 to develop agricultural biotechnology and processing technology for the livestock feed and grain processing industries, Renessen says its new system will increase the amount of ethanol produced per bushel of corn, while also increasing the value of ethanol byproducts.