£10 million biodiesel plant

Greenergy Fuels, a fuels business with annual sales of £1 billion, is to join forces with supermarket chain Tesco to build a £10 million biodiesel production facility at Immingham on the Humber Estuary in the UK.

Scheduled to open in the second quarter of 2006, subject to the usual consents, the new rapeseed oil plant plant will initially have 100,000 tonnes per annum production capacity.

Last April, Tesco, a shareholder of Greenergy, became the first major retailer to bring biodiesel to its customers by rolling out its Greenergy GlobalDiesel fuel across the UK.

The GlobalDiesel fuel itself is a blend of 95% Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel and 5% biodiesel made from rapeseed. As such,  drivers switching from their normal diesel to GlobalDiesel can just fill up and go - as there are no changes needed to the engine or oil.

Discussions are now underway with potential partner investors including Louis Dreyfus, the global agricultural commodity and energy trader, and Grainfarmers, the UK's largest farmer owned arable business and one of the merchants offering the so-called ‘Field to Forecourt’ contract to buy rapeseed from UK farmers for biodiesel production.