About Us

For more information on our team, click here.

Craig Parker started researching the biofuel industry in 2005 after hearing
from a friend how much it was to fill his diesel powered pickup truck with
$3.50/gallon fuel. His passion grew once he talked with a man that had a
bumper sticker on the back of his truck announcing that his vehicle ran on
“biodiesel.” The research led him to his first Portland Community College
2006 Northwest Biofuels Conference and by mid 2006 brought his talents
and passion into some kind of a business resulting from the favorable
national and Oregon political climate for the alternative fuels movement.

Numerous meetings with industry analysts taught Mr. Parker that there was
an unmet need in Oregon for large scale seed oil processing for the
biodiesel industry. There had been some interest within the agriculture
community to grow biofuel feedstock in Oregon but, there was no local
feedstock processor to convert the raw material into vegetable oil for the
biodiesel industry. Craig also needed to find a person with the right
background to oversee the facility, which led him to a chance meeting with
Marlin Pilcher. After attending the Northwest Biofuels Conference with Craig
and after several meetings and phone discussions , Marlin was on board
and searching for as much information as he could find on Camelina,
Canola and building this processing plant.

By late 2006 the hunt was on for a site to build a seed oil production plant
and this culminated in the discovery of the present location on hwy. 99W in
Rickreall, OR. Formerly the “Dallas Co-op” grain elevator, this facility has
enough bulk storage for 432,000 bushels. WBP’s site acreage, existing
750’ rail and 80’ truck scale, plus its state of the art cold press seed
crushing and meal handling gives Oregon the momentum to move forward
as a leader in the Northwest alternative fuels movement. At capacity, this
facility will be capable of processing 100,000,000lbs of seed annually
equating to approximately 4.2mm gallons of vegetable oil with engineering
and space that allows for unlimited expansion.

In addition Mr. Parker would like to thank OSU and the open door of Dr.
David Hackleman (Chemical Engineering) and Daryl Ehrensing (Crop and
Soil). Other influential keys to WBP’s early success include the analysts at
the Oregon Department of Energy (Mark Kendall, Rick Wallace, Evan Elias,
and Jeff Keto).

Finally, WBP would like to thank Tyson Keever of Sequential-Pacific for the
professional association that continues to grow between our companies.