Government fuels UK SAF industry with further investment in Alfanar’s Lighthouse Green Fuels project

Alfanar has secured £8 million (€9.2 million) in the third round of the UK Government’s Advanced Fuel Fund (AFF), marking another key milestone as the company’s Lighthouse Green Fuels (LGF) sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) project moves towards construction.
The AFF competition provides grant funding to commercial and demonstration-scale projects in the UK at development stages up to construction.

The funding will support the completion of engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) and front-end engineering and design (FEED) of LGF – a crucial step to realising Alfanar’s £2 billion (€2.3 billion) investment into the world’s largest and most advanced second-generation SAF facility.

Set for completion in 2029, the facility will be essential to decarbonising UK aviation, producing 180 million litres of SAF per year – enough to power 27,000 short haul flights. It could utilise Teesside’s planned carbon capture infrastructure enabling it to produce negative emissions fuels, with potential lifecycle greenhouse gas savings of 200% compared to conventional jet fuel.

This latest grant brings Alfanar’s total funding under the AFF scheme to over £27 million and reinforces the Government’s ongoing support for the project. Alfanar remains the only developer to have been successful in all three AFF rounds, in addition to previous success under the Green Fuels, Green Skies competition in 2022.

Alfanar UK country head, Noaman Al Adhami, said: “We are delighted to receive further funding from the UK Government via the AFF to help us realise our world leading SAF investment in Teesside. Coupled with the SAF Mandate and incoming Revenue Certainty Mechanism, the UK is well placed to be a global leader in SAF development.

"With continued support, our LGF project will cut aviation emissions — one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise — while helping to establish a new green industry and create new jobs in Teesside and attracting major inward investment to the UK.”