Robert issues biofuel warning

Apr 11 2008 by Paul Gannon, Evening Gazette

BIOFUELS producers on Teesside will have to adapt and diversify if they are to survive, according to Stokesley-based BF Oils.

The company, set up in November 2007, turned over £5.5m in its first four months of operation by giving similar advice to German biofuels producers facing trading conditions which have been even tougher than those in the UK, said boss Robert Starling.

And he revealed that he was in discussions with more than one North-east-based plant about introducing similar processes and technologies that would turn them into multi-feedstock operations, having already raised £20m of investment for one unnamed plant.

“The German biofuels industry is going through a much harder time - 40% of them are predicted to go out of business and are facing the same problems in terms of investor confidence,” said Mr Starling. “I developed a strategy based on feedstocks in the waste market which doesn’t affect the food chain.”

Creating a ‘virtuous circle’ by supplying processors with waste fats and oils from the food industry which, in turn, bought back the biofuel for transport, helped counter the “massive backlash in Germany against rapeseed”, he said.

He was critical of the UK industry’s tendency to blame external market forces, including cheap US imports of biodiesel, for failure.

“Some companies are using the biofuels debate to mask what’s happening internally,” he said. “In the UK, we have made the mistake of building a manufacturing plant and then finding the feedstock. You are almost best securing the supply of feedstock first.”

The company, which offers a technical support and supply package, is working with two engineers from fermentation and biofuels backgrounds.

With former D1 Oils founding director Adam Simcock, it is also developing its own supply of jatropha oil - the renewable feedstock on which D1 Oils is now pinning its future hopes.

Mr Starling said 6,000 acres had already been planted in Malawi, the Phillippines and Mozambique, inter-cropped with traditional cash crops such as vanilla and tobacco, which protected the local community from volatility in the biofuels market.

This week, D1 confirmed it was looking to pull out of its Teesside operation, citing unfavourable conditions in the UK.