Used Cooking Oil Collection and Use in Finland

by Aino Siirala* and Maija Sihvonen* (Advanced Biofuels USA) Current UCO market: In Europe, UCO (used cooking oil) collection and reuse has increased steadily during the past decade, reaching its peak in 2016. The most significant UCO producer in Europe is Germany, where 140 000 tons of UCO is collected yearly.

In comparison, Finland’s 4000 tons of UCO per year seems rather modest. The main reasons for this are the long distances and significantly smaller population (5.5 million vs. 82 million in Germany).

The biggest manufacturer of renewable biofuel in Finland is Neste Oil. Their most famous product is NEXBTL, a renewable diesel fuel which consists of 12 different ingredients, mainly palm and rapeseed oil. Neste has also investigated using domestic UCOs in NEXBTL, but currently collecting UCOs on a large scale in Finland is not cost-effective enough for their production processes.

The biggest UCO collector in Finland is SKKOY. They collect used cooking oil countrywide from restaurants like McDonald’s, convenience food industry, grills, bakeries, and grocery stores. Waste grease is used for producing industrial lubricating oils, for example.

Lauri Turpeinen from SKKOY notes that even though they also collect grease from small towns, the amount is not enough for profitable biofuel production in Finland. Cultural factors seem to influence this. Turpeinen explained that in Finland, most of the used oil gets reused and pointed out that deep frying is not traditional in Finland. McDonald's, their first oil provider, brought a culture of throwing out used oil. Before that, oil was not used in large quantities at a time; and when it was, it was reused until finished.

Inquiries at one of the student restaurants on the Aalto University campus revealed that they are not collecting waste oil because they don't produce any. They don't have a deep fryer and use only small amounts of oil.

Another challenge is the excise duty on biofuels in Finland. That is why SKKOY exports most of its oil to Germany, where it is used for biofuel production, among others purposes, since Germany’s excise duty policy is different from Finland's.

However, there is some domestic biofuel production: for example, a Finnish fast food chain Hesburger produces about 1000 kilos of UCO daily, which is transported to a Finnish ship management company VG shipping for marine fuel production.

Future prospects: Even though the amount of collected UCO in Finland is still relatively low, due to increasing regulation from the European Union and the tightening climate legislation, in the near future Finnish companies are likely to turn to unconventional solutions such as using twigs, peat and excess dough from bakeries in biofuel production.

According to the European Union’s 20-20-20 target, 20 % of the energy used for transportation should be renewable in 2020. This will probably also encourage companies to find ways for making UCO collection profitable in Finland.

This year, BioMpower Ltd. is constructing a biorefinery in Laukaa, Finland, and the commercial production will start in January 2016. The refinery will produce biodiesel among other renewable fuels. The initial production capacity of biodiesel is 4 million liters per year (in comparison, Neste Oil’s production capacity in Finland is more than 90 times bigger).[1]

Annimari Lehtomäki, the Business Development Director of BioGTS, notes that using their technology allows lower production costs than Neste Oil’s NEXBTL. Therefore, their feedstock will be mostly grease from restaurants and food industry, collected from Finland and other countries.

If you are interested in recycling the used cooking oil of your restaurant or business in Finland, you can contact SKKOY for more information: http://www.skkoy.com.

*Aino Siirala studies civil and environmental engineering at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland. She volunteers as a reporter and writer for Advanced Biofuels USA to gain experience combining science and writing for a potential journalism career.

* Advanced Biofuels USA contributor, Maija Sihvonen, a technical writer and student of energy technology at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland, aims for a career specializing in renewable energy and politics.

This article is part of a series of articles on how the practical aspects of gathering and reusing cooking oil around the world. If you would like to contribute an article for this series, please contact Joanne Ivancic at inf0 @ AdvancedBiofuelsUSA.org.