Marathon Petroleum Corp. has purchased the 50 MMgy Duonix biodiesel plant in Beatrice, Nebraska, which was idled in 2019 by joint-venture owners Flint Hills Resources and Benefuel. A company spokesperson told Biodiesel Magazine that Marathon plans to use the facility to aggregate and pretreat feedstocks such as corn oil, soybean oil and rendered fats before shipping them to its renewable diesel facility in Dickinson, North Dakota.

The Dickinson plant is a diesel fuel refinery formerly owned by Tesoro that Marathon is retrofitting under a two-phase renovation to first coprocess renewable diesel and then to completely convert the site to 100 percent renewable diesel production. Last year Ron Day with the Dickinson refinery told Biodiesel Magazine that the second phase of the conversion was expected to be complete by end of 2020 and is scaled to produce 184 MMgy of renewable diesel.

The Beatrice plant was originally built in 2008 but was never fully operational. Flint Hills Resources purchased the facility in 2011 and in 2013 the company formed a joint venture with Benefuel to commercially prove its Ensel biodiesel production technology. In 2016, the plant became operational. 

According to the Marathon spokesperson, the Beatrice, Nebraska, pretreatment facility is expected to be operational by early next year.