An ethanol plant will rise from the ground near Maxton after all .

That’s the word from the company preparing to construct the plant, and from officials willing to give the start-up firm another chance after several delays. The plant is expected to produced about 5 million gallons of ethanol a year while providing a local buyer of corn from area farmers.

“We are looking forward to starting this project here — we’re ready to get going,” said Maurizio Giabbai, president of St. Pauls Biotek.

Area leaders have decided not to tear up a contract it entered two years ago with the company. That’s because the Georgia firm has complied with a request from the county for financial information.

The county signed a 15-year contract with Solv-It Technologies, which later became St. Pauls Biotek, in February 2007. As part of the agreement, the county installed a $1.2 million system to collect methane gas from the county landfill in St. Pauls to power the plant.

Under the contract, the government is expected to receive a 6 percent royalty, or about $400,000 a year. The plant is expected to create about 15 jobs.

St. Pauls Biotek officials recently sent a letter of commitment and documentation about finances, according to Robeson County Manager Ken Windley.

“They did send it and they plan to begin work the first week in April,” Windley said this morning.

County officials were concerned that the project would not take off after the company missed several deadlines. The process has been so long that county commissioners are a bit cautious.

“They are taking a wait-and-see attitude to see if it happens,” Windley said. “If it doesn’t happen, we have other options.”

Giabbai believes construction of the plant will begin as early as next month — even though the estimated cost has doubled to about $10 million.

“We’ve already done a lot of work, site preparation and grading of the field, and groundwork to accommodate the foundation,” Giabbai said. “And we’ve already received the air quality permits from the state of North Carolina, which is very important, of course. We already have a lot of things in place.

A major reason the cost of the plant has mushroomed is that the cost of raw materials has gone up.

“Since last year we saw in the market saw some substantial increases in raw materials. Every month there was new pricing. That really resulted in this significant increase, and one would assume the pricing would come down, like oil prices, but not so with raw materials,” he said.

Windley said if the project does not move forward, the county still has options, such as finding another entity that wants to use the methane gas as a power generator, or selling the carbon credits generated by the system.