Biodiesel Opportunities Abroad
by Ron Kotrba (Biodiesel Magazine) Several U.S. producers, including Genuine Bio-Fuel, Hero BX and the now-defunct Promethean Biofuels, in addition to Miami-based biodiesel exporter and hopeful technology provider Lagosur, sketch out overviews of international developments.
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“Taxation, regulation, cost of production, market access, distribution, and feedstock procurement are all more advantageous outside of the U.S. at this time,” Hill (Todd Hill, founder of the now-defunct Promethean Biofuels) says. “Coupled with a strong dollar, and what looks to be a protracted reduction in the price of crude, you have a set of externalities that all make foreign investment in biodiesel and specialty chemicals very promising for organizations that are not fully integrated feedstock-to-end-product operations. The current climate also promotes foreign operation for those entities looking to integrate or fortify access to feedstock and chemical components.”
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Genuine Bio-Fuel has several proposed build-outs, according to Longo (Jeff Longo, executive vice president of Genuine Bio-Fuel), in Latin America, Alaska, Africa and Europe, and several already completed or in the process. “For example, mobile bio facilities that can use various feedstocks supplying generators to power parts of Africa and Alaska at a third of the price per kilowatt normally charged,” he says. “Our patent-pending technology not only allows us to use 60 percent less energy, but it affords us to be a true continuous flow plant utilizing about 50 percent of the normal catalyst, a wide variety of feedstock with little concern of free fatty acid (FFA) values and having companies purchase our glycerol coproduct due to the higher-quality glycerin in it.”
Longo says the company owns several operations outside the U.S. and grows its own feedstock in these locations. “We have had nothing but enthusiastic participation from these governments, local and national, with set programs that have longevity to them,” he says. “Our partners overseas are enthusiastic about even further expansion there.”
Today much of Genuine Bio-Fuel’s Florida production is shipped overseas. “We make really high-quality biodiesel and ship the majority of it now off shore, negating the RIN market volatility and all,” Longo says. “Yes, we get higher pricing to offset this, however, we also save these countries money and they are going green.”
With its November 2015 purchase of the 15 MMgy Veros Energy plant in Alabama and its 50 MMgy facility in Pennsylvania, Hero BX is on the move domestically—but the company is not putting all its biodiesel eggs in the U.S. market. Hero BX is in the early stages of developing a project in Jamaica. Consultants representing the firm have visited the island since a 2015 Jamaica Investment Forum and have been meeting with various government and private sector stakeholders with serious interest in confirming the project. READ MORE
