Investors are invited to join fuel revolution

Feb 27 2008 by Peter McCusker, The Journal

A FRESH drive to build another huge biofuel plant on Teesside has been launched, with its backers confident of securing £135m of private finance for a project which will help meet new green Government fuel targets.

London-based Future Capital and its partners Stockton-based Vireol say they have already lined up a £195m debt package to support the deal and now need private finance support.

The £330m raised will be used to construct a bioethanol plant on Teesside and a second plant at Grimsby. Together they will supply a third of the 1m tonnes of ethanol likely to be needed to meet government targets requiring 5% of all fuels to be biofuel by 2010.

John Seymour, rural affairs spokesman for North East Biofuels, said this confirmed the region as one of the two leading regions for the biofuels industry.

“This is indeed good news for the Teesside biofuels industry and the North East in general. The Government readily accepts that two biofuel ‘hubs’ are emerging in the UK and this announcement confirms that they are indeed Teesside and Humberside.”

Tim Levy, chief executive of Future, said the project should avoid the recent poor publicity surrounding biofuels, which involve its manufacture pushing up food prices.

Last year, The Journal reported how Vireol was in the process of sourcing financial support for the project. Chief executive Andrew Hartley said at the time: “There is some scepticism out there about biofuels at the moment but we are not facing any situation that has stopped our progress.”