New joint venture between Cargill and HELM will create more demand for Iowa-grown corn. 

Corn grown in the soils of southeast Iowa will soon be a component in products ranging from spandex and sneakers to car seats and cell phone cases through a new joint venture between Cargill and HELM AG called Qore. 

Located on Cargill’s 2,000-acre corn processing campus just outside of Eddyville, Qore is the world’s first large-scale facility to process corn into a renewable material called BDO (1,4-butanediol), branded as Qira. 

The biobased material is an identical replacement to fossil-derived BDO and can readily drop into manufacturing 

processes across multiple industries including fashion and footwear, beauty and personal care products, automotive parts, electronics and packaging.

“Qira is the purest, the most sustainable product in its category,” said Axel Viering, executive board member at HELM AG, a Germany-based chemical marketing company. “The goal is to position Qore as an asset...