McDonald’s UAE completes 5 million kilometres on McBiodiesel

Hamburger giant McDonald’s vehicle fleet in the United Arab Emirates has completed 5 million kilometres of running entirely on biodiesel.

To reach the total distance, McDonald’s United Arab Emirates (UAE) partnered with the Dubai-based biodiesel producer Neutral Fuels.

The renewable fuel is produced from the used cooking oil (UCO) collected from the fast food concern’s 135 outlets up to twice a day.

According to McDonald’s, the company is the first fast food chain in the area to recycle all of its UCO to fuel its logistics fleet.

Each litre of UCO can be converted to approximately a litre of biodiesel, and the fuel’s price matches the pump price of fossil diesel, although McDonald’s refuses to reveal the wholesale prices and discounts it receives for providing the fuel feedstock.

But according to Karl Feilder, chairman of Neutral Fuels, McDonald’s is not alone in using biodiesel, and the sales of the alternative fuel have doubled in the past three years.

'Together with McDonald’s, we have shown that running vehicles on 100% biofuel is a safe, logical, and sustainable course of action,' he says

In November, Neutral Fuels reported having produced and sold 400,000 litres of biodiesel for different utilities, including hotels, restaurants, school, and transport companies.

The company currently has one biodiesel refinery in the UAE that has a capacity of putting out a monthly 500,000 or annual 6 million litres of fuel.

‘At the moment, we’re satisfying a fraction of 1% of the potential market, and our goal is to reach 5%. We’d love to expand to the broader Gulf Cooperation Council and then Mena, but getting permission is hard,' says Feilder.