US renewable producer Diamond Green Diesel (DGD) – a 50/50 joint venture between Darling Ingredients and Valero Energy Corporation – has received approval to begin construction of a renewable diesel plant in Port Arthur Texas, Nasdaq reported on 28 January.
With an estimated capacity of around 1.7bn litres (470M gallons)/year of renewable diesel, Nasdaq said the Port Arthur plant was expected to be operational in the second half of 2023.
Once operational, and when combined with the increased capacity at its Norco, Louisiana facility, DGD's total annual production capacity was expected to be approximately 4.5bn litres (1.2bn gallons) of renewable diesel and 189M litres (50M gallons) of renewable naphtha, according to the Nasdaq report.
“We believe Darling's vertical integration coupled with Valero's refining expertise are key to providing low carbon feedstocks to the DGD renewable diesel platform,” Darling Ingredients chairman and CEO Randall C Stuewe was quoted as saying.
"We expect low-carbon fuel policies to continue to expand globally and drive demand for renewable fuels," Valero chairman and CEO Joe Gorder added.
Darling Ingredients is a leading renderer, and operates 200 processing plants on five continents. It converts beef, poultry and pork by-product streams into usable and speciality ingredients, such as gelatin, tallow, feed-grade fats, meat and bone meal, poultry meal, yellow grease, fuel feedstocks and green energy, which are sold to the pharmaceutical, food, pet food, feed, fuel, bio-energy and fertiliser industries around the world. Additionally, in North America, it provides used cooking oil collection and grease trap services to the restaurant industry.
Valero Energy Corporation, through its subsidiaries collectively known as Valero, is an international manufacturer and marketer of transportation fuels and petrochemical products.
Texas-based Valero, through its subsidiaries, owns 15 petroleum refineries in the USA, Canada and the UK, and 14 ethanol process plants in the USA.
