St1 presses ahead with Norwegian bioethanol plant development

Finland-based biofuels firm St1 has announced that its Norwegian subsidiary, Smart Fuel, has announced plans to build a bioethanol plant at the site of a former paper mill in Norway that will use local forest industry residues as feedstock.

The company said it has signed a letter of intent (LoI) for the project with Viken Skog , the largest forest owners' cooperative in Norway.

The planned Cellunolix plant, to be located at Follum in Honefoss, will be able to produce 50 million litres (13.2 million gallons) of advanced cellulosic bioethanol for transport fuel per year. The project is expected to reach investment decision in 2018 and become operational by 2021.

St1 has a business that focuses on waste-based, advanced ethanol production and production technologies. It is co-owner and technology provider for North European Bio Tech (NEB), whose first Cellunolix plant, to be fuelled by sawdust, will go live in Finland this year.

It is estimated that the project will reach the investment decision stage in 2018 and the plant will be in operation by 2021.

‘Seeking locations’

“St1 is seeking locations for new Cellunolix plants in all of its operating countries, Finland, Sweden and Norway. I am glad that our project in Norway has progressed well. This project reflects the great opportunity we see in Norway to produce and market advanced biofuels with an excellent CO₂ footprint and to replace fossil fuels in order to meet transportation energy needs in a sustainable manner,” said Mika Wiljanen, CEO of Smart Fuel.

According to St1, it is a pioneer in waste-based, advanced ethanol production and production technologies. In Finland, the company already has four Etanolix plants utilising food industry residues and one Bionolix plant producing ethanol from biowaste collected from grocery retailers and households.

 The company is also a co-owner and technology provider for North European Bio Tech (NEB), which has an Etanolix plant in the Gothenburg St1 Refinery. NEB’s first Cellunolix plant to use sawdust as feedstock will begin production in Kajaani, Finland this year. 

“This project marks a milestone towards delivering on our vision to be the leading seller and producer of CO₂-aware energy in Norway. We are very excited about the opportunity to cooperate with Treklyngen and Viken Skog in producing renewable fuel from renewable forest residue,” says Thomas Hansen, director of Renewable Energy, Smart Fuel.

Hansen: “We also plan to use side streams from our own biofuel production process to produce renewable energy in order to power the plant, in line with the closed loop approach.”