Ensus to halt bioethanol plant

Teesside, UK – Ensus has decided to temporarily pause production at its bioethanol plant due to continuing adverse market conditions. The Teesside plant was restarted last August, after a 15-month shutdown.

The company does not know how long this latest shutdown will last, but said “we hope that market conditions can improve and are working towards the plant becoming operational again in the near future.”

The European ethanol market continues to be challenging as the price of ethanol has not risen in line with input costs.

In the UK the poor wheat harvest in 2012 has also had an adverse impact on the quality and price of the feed wheat feedstock used within the plant, while rising gas prices have pushed our costs up considerably.

While it foresees a good long-term future for the sector, Ensus is deeply frustrated by the slow development of the UK and European markets for bioethanol.

Bioethanol and protein for animal feed make a major contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing the UK’s energy and food security, the company points out. The high-protein animal feed produced, it adds, reduces the country’s reliance on imported materials,

“Ensus remains confident in the long term future of the biofuels sector,” said Peter Sopp, CEO of Ensus. “Ensus is able to supply genuine environmentally sustainable ethanol to satisfy demand, but unfortunately market conditions are working against us at the moment.

“We believe it is critical that the Government continues to support the use of high quality sustainable biofuels.”

Ensus is to restart its bioethanol plant on Teesside in late August, the company has announced.

Prior to the restart last August, the £300-million facility, which is Europe’s largest bio-refinery, had been mothballed for 15 months due to unfavourable market conditions for its products in Europe. Around 100 plant employees had been kept on full pay throughout the shutdown.

The decision to restart followed a move by the EU’s Customs Code Committee to close the loophole in the tariff system that allowed imports of subsidised US product to distort the market.

This, together with the ending of US taxpayer subsidies for ethanol, has been a major factor in the improvement of market conditions, said Ensus.

The Teesside bio-refinery is designed to convert more than 1 million tonnes of animal grade wheat into roughly equal amounts of fuel grade alcohol, high protein animal feed and carbon dioxide using a process of distillation and fermentation.

The ethanol is blended with petrol to create greener road fuel whilst UK and European farmers use the high protein wheat residue from the process as animal feed preventing the need for imports of high protein feeds from countries producing it in a less sustainable manner.

Carbon dioxide from the process is used in the UK and European food and drinks industry.