The U.S. Grains Council is adding a new strategic director in Asia and assistant director in Southeast Asia to help increase near-term demand for feed grain sales and build long-term demand for ethanol among global customers.

Tim Tierney has joined the Council as director of strategic marketing/ethanol in North Asia, filling a new role that seeks to capitalize on both longstanding relationships in the region and emerging opportunities for biofuels. Tierney, who will be based in Singapore, came to the organization from Syngenta and DuPont, where he worked on products developed for the ethanol industry.

Caleb Wurth will join the Council’s Southeast Asia regional office in Kuala Lumpur as assistant director in November. Most recently with ADM, Wurth has experience marketing corn and corn co-products to feedlots and working on containerized grain export logistics, both of which are particularly relevant to that region.

These additions complement other staff expansions over the last year that are meant to help find, develop and capture wholly new demand for corn, sorghum, barley, distiller’s dried grains with solubles (DDGS) and ethanol.