Aemetis Upgrades Biofuels Plant in India

US biofuels and renewable chemicals company Aemetis announced last month the completion of a two-year upgrade of its Kakinada, India biodiesel and glycerine plant. The upgrade now brings the annual plant capacity to 165,000 tons of biodiesel and 18,000 tons of glycerine. “The upgrade includes a pre-treatment unit to process lower-cost and waste feedstock into oil, and  expansion of boiler and other utility capacities to enable full production of 50 million gallons (189 millions liters) of biodiesel and bio-oil while simultaneously operating the biodiesel, pre-treatment and glycerine refining units,” Aemetis said.

The company said the 2018 India National Policy on Biofuels raised the target for domestic biodiesel consumption from less than 1% presently to 5% of the approximately 25 billion gallons (94 billion liters)/year of petroleum diesel consumed.  In mid-2018, the Goods and Services Tax on biodiesel was reduced from 18% to 12% to encourage the usage of biodiesel.  In addition, the Indian government recently issued a purchase requisition for some 260 million gallons (984 million liters) of biodiesel for 2019 to be supplied by domestic biodiesel producers.