News

Sunshine Kaidi New Energy Group, a Chinese renewable energy giant, is planning to invest €1 billion in a new wood-based biodiesel plant in Finland, as the country looks to replace fossil fuels with biofuels. Kaidi said the plant would use wood-based biomass as its main raw material and it is scheduled to start operations in the northern city of Kemi by the end of 2019. The plant is due to…
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Lincoln Terminal Co., a US-based oil and products and biofuels marketing company, has acquired a new terminal, called Eco, in Charlotte, North Carolina. According to reports on news website TankTerminals.com, Lincoln's Charlotte terminal will have a total capacity of 130,000 bbl, and serves gasoline, ethanol and biodiesel. The terminal can also cater for different products and automated biodiesel…
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Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM), a US-based food processing and commodities trading company, is conducting a strategic review on its ethanol mills, as its ethanol arm continues to be hit by falling oil prices. The firm announced, last week, that two of its dry ethanol mills, based in Nebraska and Iowa, will be reviewed for "strategic options" — an analysis that could lead to a sale. ADM is…
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Argentina is set to beef up its ethanol production by increasing the required blend of ethanol in gasoline from 10% to 12%, according to media reports. The South American country's President, Mauricio Macri, said the additional ethanol would be exclusively derived from sugar, according to news agency Reuters. The increase should provide a boost to farmers there who have been struggling with a…
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Egregor Biotech and Evolution Group is planning to construct a bioethanol plant in the forest-rich Komi Republic in Northern Russia. The plant would process 400,000 tpy of unusable timber and sawmill residues into 100,000 tonnes of ethanol, according to the Komiinform news agency. Egregor has already invested RUB15 million (€177,000) in the project, but the total required investment is…
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Neste, a Finland-based renewable diesel producer, reported better than expected fourth-quarter profits and dividend thanks to high European refining margins and favourable foreign exchange rates. Neste, which has two conventional refineries in Finland and renewable diesel refineries in Singapore and Rotterdam, said its core operating profit in the quarter rose 39% from a year ago to €352m…
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China’s state-owned ChemChina will acquire the Swiss agri business Syngenta in a long-rumoured and controversial $43 billion (€39.4bn) deal. Secrecy has surrounded the deal since November 2015, when Syngenta – the producer of bioengineered Enogen corn for the ethanol industry – received a $47 billion takeover offer from the US agricultural juggernaut Monsanto. A Swiss and…
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Caltech Ventures, a Ghana-based cassava cropping and processing company, will start the production of ethanol from cassava at a distillery in Hodzo in the Ho municipality this March, according to local press reports. This would be the first industrial-scale ethanol production in the West African country which imports around 60m litres of ethanol per year. Kasapreko Company (KCL), an indigenous…
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Gevo, a US biofuels producer, has signed a joint agreement with alcohol producer Porta Hnos to develop several isobutanol plants in Argentina. Financial terms for developing the corn-fed plants were not immediately disclosed. The first plant, slated to come online by 2017, has an expected annual production of 5m gallons of isobutanol. Gevo is projecting about $1m in annual revenue — from…
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Biofuels producer Renewable Energy Group (REG) has signed an asset purchase agreement with US-based rendering firm Sanimax Energy to acquire Sanimax's 20m gallon nameplate capacity biodiesel refinery located in DeForest, Wisconsin. Under the asset purchase agreement, REG will pay Sanimax around $11m in cash and will issue 500,000 shares of REG common stock in exchange for the biorefinery and…
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US-based biofuels producer Virent has entered into a new strategic relationship with petroleum specialist Tesoro to accelerate the development and commercialisation of Virent's products. Virent's patented technology features catalytic chemistry to convert plant-based materials into a full range of products identical to those made from petroleum, including gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and chemicals…
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Scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee (IIT-R) have successfully generated low-cost biofuel using a perennial weed, the Kans grass. The grass, native to the Indian subcontinent, grows up to three feet in height and, being widely available and perennial, comes at low cost. "Through our technology, which we have now got patented, bioethanol will be produced as a substitute for…
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Z Energy, a New Zealand-based energy producer, is on track to open the country's first commercial scale biodiesel plant in Wiri, south Auckland, in June. The plant will turn inedible tallow, a by-product of the New Zealand meat industry, into 20 million litres of biodiesel a year, with the potential to scale production up to 40m litres a year. Z Energy has invested $21m (€19.4m) in the…
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US-based logistics frim Global Partners LP has cut 70 jobs and aims to handle only ethanol, not crude, at its rail terminal in Oregon in response to low oil prices. The company, which owns one of the largest terminal networks of petroleum products and renewable fuels in the north east of the US, also cut its distribution for the October-December period by 33.7% compared to the previous quarter,…
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