Festive Commissioning of the HVO Production Plant in Rotterdam

Neste Oil AG commissioned its new facility with a capacity of 800,000 tonnes for the production of hydrated vegetable oil (HVO) in Rotterdam on 19th December 2011.

With this new plant coming on stream alongside the production sites in Singapore and Porvoo, Finland, the company now has a total capacity of around 2 million tonnes of HVO. The Union zur Förderung von Oel- und Proteinpflanzen e.V. (UFOP) estimates that Neste Oil will not only become a player in the competitive market for biofuels to replace diesel in the EU, but will also enter the market for bio-kerosene. Biofuels have no alternative in aviation.

The new production facility is already certified according to ISCC criteria and thus also fulfils the sustainability requirements for market entry in the EU. The plant is designed to process a large number of raw materials. According to the company itself, there are also plans to process algae oil in future. High hopes have been pinned on this raw material source as a means of extending the range and potential of raw materials, and it is currently the subject of intensive research.

UFOP and Neste Oil are meanwhile cooperating as a result of an executive meeting in various demonstration projects concerning the application of HVO, for example as part of the fleet project "Diesel Regenerative" at the Coburg University of Applied Sciences and the Four Motors racing project with Smudo as prominent driver.

The application field of bio-kerosene will be presented both on the occasion of the international biofuels conference “Fuels of the Future” organised by the BBE and UFOP on 23rd and 24th January 2012 (http://event.bioenergie.de/) and form the focus of the biofuels exhibition of "nature.tec" as part of the IGW 2012 in Berlin. A cutaway model of a Boeing 737 jet engine will be on display for the first time at the nature-tec Hall 5.2a.