Trafigura Group-owned Greenergy has begun consultations on a proposal to halt manufacturing at one in all its two UK biodiesel crops, as uncertainty in regards to the nation’s biofuels business grows.
Regardless of cost-cutting efforts, the plant in Immingham, Lincolnshire “has continued to be negatively impacted by market components, together with slower will increase within the UK’s biofuels mixing mandates in comparison with European international locations and competitors from backed US-origin merchandise,” the corporate mentioned in a press release.
Greenergy and British ethanol crops need the federal government to revise coverage to assist the sector. The business is in search of elevated mixing mandates – above the present 10 % ranges – as cheaper American provides flood the home market.
One ethanol manufacturing facility has already began to wind down operations due to the hit from American ethanol provides.
“As European international locations are updating their mandates in latest months, the UK has fallen fairly a bit behind Europe,” Greenergy Chief Govt Officer Adam Traeger mentioned in an interview. Regardless of speaking to the British authorities on the lag in coverage, “we’re not seeing the motion that we want,” he mentioned.
Stress on the biodiesel business has come from US firms sending elevated volumes of hydrotreated vegetable oil to Britain, following the elimination of countervailing duties and anti-dumping tariffs, Traeger mentioned. Altering the mixing mandate or encouraging elevated use by the maritime or aviation industries would assist enhance volumes of biofuel used within the UK.
The Immingham plant accounts for greater than 25 % of the UK’s biodiesel manufacturing, in keeping with the corporate. Its bigger Teesside plant will exchange a few of these volumes, Traeger mentioned, in any other case it’ll “have to get replaced with imports coming from different producers both in Europe or all over the world.”
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