Biodiesel production in Indonesia increased by 7% in December while the country’s exports surged, according to local trade association data reported by S&P Global.
Indonesia produced 1.24bn litres (7.82M barrels) of biodiesel in December, a 7.2% increase compared to the previous month, APROBI said on 2 February.
In 2023, biodiesel output by the world’s third-largest producer totalled 13.15bn litres, up 11.3% compared to the previous year, APROBI data showed.
Exports increased by 49.5% compared to 14.25bn litres in December.
In February 2023, Indonesia had increased the mandated percentage of palm oil-based biodiesel to 35% (B35) from an earlier 30% mandate that had been in place since 2020, with the blend introduced nationwide last August, S&P Global wrote on 2 February.
Local biodiesel consumption fell 926M litres in December from 109M litres in November, APROBI said.
The country’s Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry had raised this year’s allocation for palm oil-based biodiesel to 13.41bn litres, up 1.9% from 2023, S&P Global wrote.
Indonesia – the world’s largest palm oil producer – was estimated to have consumed 11.9M tonnes – or 26.6% of its total production – of the vegetable oil as a biodiesel feedstock in the 2022/23 (October-September) marketing year (MY), according to a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) report published in August 2023.
For MY2023/24, the agency expected Indonesia’s industrial use of its palm oil supply to increase to 12.7M tonnes, or 27.6% of its production for the year.
Platts had assessed biodiesel FOB Southeast Asia at US$933/tonne on 1 February, down 3.2% from 29 January, S&P Global Commodity Insights data showed.
