A £50 million (€70.2 million) biodiesel plant is to be built by WHEB Biofuels in the Port of Rotterdam. The plant will be a multi-feedstock plant with the capacity to convert up to 400,000 tonnes of vegetable oil to biodiesel per annum which will be supplied on long-term contracts to major oil companies.

Construction of the plant, which is subject to environmental permitting, is expected to start later this year with the plant commencing full scale commercial operations in 2009. 

Colin Horton, Managing Director of WHEB Biofuels said: “The Rotterdam plant will provide a much-needed resource to support the increasing demand for biofuels and so make an important contribution to the EU’s biofuels and greenhouse gas reduction targets.”

ED & F Man and ATMOS SpA have an equity investment in WHEB Biofuels with ED & F Man contracted to source and supply the plant’s feedstock requirements.

John Laing, Divisional Financial Director of ED & F Man Holdings, said: “We are delighted to be WHEB Biofuels’ strategic partner. The WHEB team has considerable experience of developing biodiesel projects, which complements our own experience in the purchasing and trading of quality vegetable oils and glycerine products.”

The vegetable oils used in the plant will be purchased from sustainable sources.  ED & F Man are undertaking audits of its main suppliers to verify the sustainability of the vegetable oil purchases.

The plant is to be located on a site within the Koole vegetable oil storage terminal at Pernis in the Port of Rotterdam.  The Koole site is a bulk storage terminal in Rotterdam dedicated to the storage and handling of vegetable oils and oleo chemical products.  As such, it has excellent berthing facilities for the receipt of vegetable oil cargoes and the redelivery of biodiesel to barge or ship.

WHEB Biofuels’ Colin Horton added: “As the plant will be in the Port of Rotterdam it is ideally located from both a commercial and logistics perspective.  We are incredibly grateful for the help and support given by the Port of Rotterdam and Koole Tank Storage BV in facilitating this project.”