Aemetis Inc., a renewable fuels company focused on negative carbon intensity products, announced on Feb. 16 that the Universal Biofuels subsidiary of Aemetis in Kakinada, India has agreed to acquire a site to construct a tallow oil refining facility.  The refining facility is designed to supply feedstock to the existing Aemetis 50 million gallon per year biodiesel plant located on the East Coast of India and provide future feedstock supply to the Aemetis 90 million gallon sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel (RD) plant being built in Riverbank, California.

“Our circular bioeconomy of renewable and carbon-negative fuels facilities includes our Kakinada biodiesel facility in India, which provides Aemetis unique global access to low carbon intensity, non-edible, renewable waste oils for the production of sustainable aviation fuel, renewable diesel and biodiesel,” stated Eric McAfee, the chairman and CEO of Aemetis. “Expanding our India operation to produce refined oil feedstock to supply Aemetis production plants in India and California demonstrates our commitment to fighting global climate change, improving air quality and creating jobs in disadvantaged communities worldwide.”

In addition to the feedstock pretreatment unit already operational at the Aemetis biodiesel plant in Kakinada, the new feedstock refining facility will expand the range of feedstocks that can be used for biodiesel, SAF and RD production to include crude tallow oil. Recent regulations adopted by the Indian Government encourage oil refiners and fuel distributors to purchase biodiesel for blending into petroleum diesel. The new feedstock refining facility will expand access to India renewable oil feedstock for existing and future Aemetis renewable fuels plants in India and California.

Aemetis built, owns and operates the Kakinada biodiesel plant with an installed capacity of 150,000 metric tonnes per year, equal to about 50 million gallons of biodiesel production annually. The Aemetis Kakinada plant is one of the largest biodiesel production facilities in India and is capable of processing a variety of vegetable oils, animal oils, and waste oil feedstocks into biodiesel that meet international product standards.

The Kakinada biodiesel plant has been upgraded to convert the crude glycerin byproduct from the biodiesel refining process into refined glycerin for pharmaceutical and industrial customers. DeSmet-Ballestra, a leading biodiesel production technology company based in Europe, supplied the design and engineering for the Kakinada plant.