Weekend fire incident at German biodiesel plant contained in time

At Petrotec's biodiesel production plant in Südlohn-Oeding, Germany, a fire broke out on the morning of Sept. 23 in a side production line of its biodiesel production process. The local fire brigades were able to quickly extinguish the fire. The main biodiesel production line has not been damaged and there was no production halt of this line. Petrotec reports that biodiesel production throughput might be reduced at approximately 5 percent for up to six weeks. The management, however, estimates that the incident will most probably have no impact on the outlook it has provided in the second-quarter report published by the company.

Petrotec AG, Germany, is the largest European producer of waste-derived biodiesel, mainly based on used cooking oil. The company owns an overall nominal biodiesel production capacity of 185,000 tons per year (approximately 55.5 MMgy) at two locations in Germany. Petrotec runs a vertically integrated business model including collection of used cooking oil from more than 15,000 collection points, treatment and refining of the raw material up to the technologically demanding production of waste-based biodiesel. The company sells its biodiesel to large mineral oil companies in northwest Europe. The usage of waste based biodiesel is incentivized by major EU countries with a double counting scheme as part of the mandatory blending quotas.

Petrotec's EcoPremium biodiesel provides significant environmental and climate advantages with the highest CO2 emission reduction of 83 percent (compared with fossil diesel) amongst all biofuels approved by the EU Renewable Energy Directive (2009/28/EC). Since its IPO in 2006, Petrotec cleaned 600,000 tons of waste and saved over 1.6 million tons of CO2 emissions. Petrotec is a public listed company in the regulated market of Frankfurt Stock Exchange, in the Prime Standard segment, complying with high international transparency standards. It has a capital stock of 24,543,741 Euro, equaling 24,543,741 shares. Main shareholder is IC Green Energy Ltd., Israel, with a stake of 69 percent, freefloat is approx. 18 percent. In the 2011 business year Petrotec reached sales of €173 million and generated an EBIT of €5.3 million and a net profit of €3 million. The company employs about 100 employees.