Biofuels company Neutral Fuels secures fund accelerator investment

Dubai-based waste to biofuel company Neutral Fuels announced it has been accepted onto the Mohammed bin Rashid Innovation Fund Accelerator (MBRIFA), a programme established by the UAE Ministry of Finance to accelerate the expansion of innovative businesses.

Neutral Fuels is one of seven companies chosen from 159 applications across 29 companies for the fund accelerator.

“This comes just as climate change is increasingly recognised as the biggest problem the world faces,” said founder and CEO Karl W. Feilder. “Governments are now putting real pressure on companies to adopt carbon solutions and biofuel is simply the quickest and easiest way to reduce greenhouse gases from transportation.

“This recognition is a fantastic reward for the nine years we’ve spent turning biofuel into a commercially viable and scalable business proposition.”

A collaboration with McDonalds between July 2011 and March 2019 saw McDonald’s delivery trucks travel over 12 million kilometres on biodiesel produced by Neutral Fuels, resulting in almost 100% reduction in the fast food chain’s carbon footprint.

“Being a member of the MBRIFA will help us accelerate our plans to expand beyond the UAE this year, and we will expand yet further with a stock exchange listing in the next few years,” added Feilder.

Neutral Fuels had to meet a number of criteria to qualify for the MBRIFA, including having an ‘exceptional level of transferability and market potential’, according to the release.

“Ten years ago, we were granted the first ever GCC licence to commission a biodiesel refinery right in the heart of the fossil fuel capital of the world. That level of forward-thinking by a government is highly unusual,” said Feilder.

The company has plans to expand beyond the UAE to other countries in the region.