It’s sitting down at the golf I think get pressured overall veg oil prices as well. And we’ll see where that transpires. I think it was pre-loaded again some start-ups of some of the newer plants as well, but we’re going to watch that closely and make sure that we defend our position as a U.S.-made product against a foreign-made product getting our tax credits and we’re very focused on that. But overall, I think we’ve seen oil prices stabilize here down in the mid-50s and we’re still trading at a premium to that, on any given day. So overall, we’re still not unhappy about the values. And then lastly, you’ve seen the great equalization of the D4, 5 and 6 RINs and D3 is just significantly higher than that. And that’s really what the goal, I think of the last round of EPA rule-making was to kind of equalize all those, let RINs be a little more agnostic and then see what wins.
But overall, it’s still RINs are in the high 80s and 90s. And overall those economics are pretty well. And then lastly LCF, I think California is committed to making sure that that program is successful. So between RINs, between LCFS and obviously the biodiesel tax credit and then moving into 45Z into the program into 2025, look, I mean, we think we’re in an advantaged position as an industry, not just Green Plains, but as an industry overall to make what we think is the second largest lowest carbon feedstock available. And we think that will continue over time. And it’s just really – a lot of it continues to be re-balancing all the time between kind of the protein and the oil contribution.
Manav Gupta: Todd, very quickly. The fundamentals at ethanol are even better in 4Q versus 3Q. And I’m hoping somewhere you would say that you were not really hedged for 4Q, so you can get the full benefit of this market rally. If you could clarify?
Todd Becker: Yeah. I mean, we’ve seen overall better margin structures that have been available during Q4. It’s been volatile though in the last couple of weeks. I think if you watched it, you’ve seen it come off the highs. So there are days, I wish I would have hedged some of that volume. But we remain open on a daily basis other than small positions we have, as we mentioned. But generally speaking, the crush is – the margin structure is better than what we have seen, but it has come off its highs. We’ll see what transpires every Wednesday’s an adventure as we say. But overall driving demand has remained solid. We’ve seen it a little bit below 9 million a day, which is good for ethanol we’ve seeing good export demand coming out of – for our products, about 100 million a day – or 100,000 barrels a day, sorry.
And overall, we just got to watch production. There’s definitely some noise, more plants trying to start back up. Got to watch that, but our industry is aging and I preached that over the last several calls and that’s kind of what some of the headwinds we faced over the last 12 to 18 months. Our assets have aged, I had to re – I had to hire a new operational team to address those issues, prior to the old operational team and management at the plants as well, so just harder to run these plants. I think you’re seeing that on a weekly basis in EIA data, but generally we’re stabilized.
Manav Gupta: Thank you so much and congrats on a good quarter.
Todd Becker: Thank you.
Operator: The next question is from Craig Irwin with ROTH MKM. Your line is open.
Craig Irwin: Good morning and thanks for taking my questions. So Todd, I wanted to ask about 60 Pro. You said 25% in 2024, that’s up from last quarter. Can we may be read that to be the majority of High Pro production being 60 Pro in the back end of the year or maybe even most. Can you maybe just give us color on how you see this potentially progressing over the year?
Todd Becker: Yeah. I think what we’ve learned and what we’re seeing in terms of the demand for the product is because of the quality of the product, not only from a protein standpoint, but digestibility, feed conversion ratios, those type of things that are coming out of these long trials that we’ve been in. And we’re seeing really good interest in the product. For us, when we think about what’s the biggest thing we can do relative to non-government related programs, non-carbon programs, those type of things in the short-term is move as fast as we can to make as much 60 Pro as we can starting in 2024 and then into 2025. Look, if I could wave my magic wand, I’d make 100% today. But it takes time for the market to uptick these new products and there’s never been a new product like this in a very, very long time.
So all roads are going to lead to 60 Pro for us. We have initiatives to look at, what we need to do to bring a second plant on next year and then look at basically initiative around 100% of our plants moving to 60 Pro. Some of it what we’re learning is some of its biological, but some of it is mechanical. There are some things that the traditional 50 Pro systems just can’t do in 60 Pro. And so we’re making some of those changes. We’ll keep those private at this point, but I think that’s our clear path is to ultimately make as much 60% protein as we can and even start to go higher from there. But what a great success we had at Wood River during the quarter. We learned a lot, going to full commercial scale. We scaled up. We spent a lot of time in the 58 range before we solved that last problem, and then we spent a lot of time above 61.
So we’re very happy about that, which is what you really need to do when you start averaging into these products. So but what we’re really more excited about is, we’re getting calls in for the product now. Now, it’s going to take time for larger volumes, but the margin structure is there, the demand is there. The need for this high quality, low carbon, high digestibility feed conversion ratio product is there. And it’s there not just from the United States, but we’ve sold now 60 Pro in smaller quantities, commercial quantities, though into Middle East, Southeast Asia, South America and growing. So we’re really excited about that. And then we’re really focused on some U.S. business as well.
