US renewable fuels company Aemetis has completed the expansion of its biodiesel plant in India a year ahead of schedule resulting in an increase in production capacity to 60M gallons/year (227M litres/year).
The expansion would help meet increasing demand for biodiesel by government-owned Oil Marketing Companies (OMC’s), the company said on 6 September.
In the Aemetis Five Year Plan, the company set out its aim to increase biodiesel production at the Kakinada plant from 50M gallons/year to 100M gallons/year by 2025.
In addition, the company said it expected capital projects to increase production capacity at the biodiesel plant to 80M gallons/year (302M litres/year) to be completed ahead of schedule in the first half of next year.
“The Kakinada plant has expanded production by completing upgrades to de-bottleneck the plant, and the next phase will add additional process equipment to increase capacity,” Sanjeev Gupta, president of Aemetis International, said.
“When production capacity reaches 100M gallons/year (378M litres), the India business will be able to generate more than US$500M/year of revenues,” Gupta added.
Built by Aemetis near the eastern India port of Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh, the Universal Biofuels plant is the largest biodiesel production facility in India, according to the company.
The increased biodiesel production supported the Indian government’s goal of a 5% biodiesel blend equal to approximately 1.25bn gallons/year (4.7bn litres/year) as set out in the country’s 2022 National Biofuels Policy, Aemetis said.
Headquartered in Cupertino, California, Aemetis is a renewable natural gas, renewable fuel and biochemicals company.
According to its website, the company owns and operates production facilities with more than 110M gallons/year (416M litres/year) of production capacity in the US and India.
The company said it was expanding its production of low carbon fuels with sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel production facilities made from feedstocks including corn oil, biogas and local wood waste.
Although India consumed about 25bn gallons/year (94.6bn litres) of diesel, domestic oil production was limited and the country was dependent on imported crude oil to supply its petroleum refineries, Aemetis said.
The company said the adoption of a 5% biodiesel blending target by the India government was expected to reduce imports of petroleum, reducing the export of dollars to purchase crude oil, strengthening domestic agricultural producers and processors, and significantly improving air quality while reducing carbon pollution.