Aemetis Receives Permit to Build California SAF, Renewable Diesel Plant — OPIS

Aemetis Inc. has received a use permit from the city of Riverbank to build a 90-million-gallon/year sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel plant at its 125-acre industrial complex, the California-based biofuels producer said.

The complex, a former U.S. Army ammunition production plant, is being converted to business and industrial use as part of the federal Base Realignment and Closure program.

Aemetis has signed $3.8 billion of SAF supply contracts with airlines, and a $3.2 billion renewable diesel supply contract with a national chain of travel stops.

The plant will include about $500 million of investment and create more than 800 jobs during construction, the company said last week, as well as an estimated 650 permanent direct and indirect jobs.

Separately, Aemetis said earlier this month that its Universal Biofuels subsidiary has completed an expansion of its India biodiesel plant annual production capacity to 60 million gal more than a year ahead of schedule, supplying the expanding demand for biodiesel by India government-owned Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs).

The Aemetis Five Year Plan describes a doubling of annual output to 100 million gal from 50 million gal to be completed by 2025.

Additional capital projects to increase the annual capacity of the plant, located in Kakinada, to 80 million gal "are in process for completion in the first half of 2024, also ahead of schedule," the company said.

"The market for biodiesel in India continues to expand as OMCs increase the number of blending locations and the percentage of biofuel blended into diesel," Aemetis International President Sanjeev Gupta said in a statement.

The plant expanded production, he added, "by completing upgrades to de-bottleneck the plant, and the next phase will add additional process equipment to increase capacity."

When annual capacity reaches 100 million gal, the business will be able to generate more than $500 million per year of revenues, according to Gupta.

"Aemetis continues to demonstrate our ability to design, engineer, permit, construct and operate renewable fuels production facilities, then continually improve the energy efficiency, feedstocks, and other carbon intensive components of operations to improve financial margins by reducing costs and increasing revenues," Aemetis CEO Eric McAfee said in a statement.

The plant, located in Andhra Pradesh, is the largest biodiesel production facility in India, according to Aemetis, which said that expanded biodiesel production supports the Indian government's goal of a 5% biodiesel blend equal to approximately 1.25 billion gal/year, which was established in the 2022 National Biofuels Policy.

"India consumes about 25 billion gal per year of diesel, but India does not have a meaningful amount of domestic oil production and is dependent on imported crude oil to supply its petroleum refineries," Aemetis says. "The adoption of a 5% biodiesel blend target by the India government is expected to reduce the amount of petroleum imported into India, reduce the export of dollars to purchase crude oil, strengthen domestic agricultural producers and processors and significantly improve air quality while reducing carbon pollution."

This content was created by Oil Price Information Service, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. OPIS is run independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

--Reporting by Michael Schneider, mschneider@opisnet.com; Editing by Jordan Godwin, jgodwin@opisnet.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 25, 2023 14:15 ET (18:15 GMT)

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