Spain's Cepsa bids for strategic biodiesel investment

Abengoa is a bioenergy company based in Spain well-known in the renewable space for its grain and cellulosic ethanol assets—and more recently known for its financial distress, leading to many of those assets being sold off.

Abengoa’s leading U.S. subsidiary filed bankruptcy and subsequently received approval to exit Chapter 11 in favor of a debt-restructuring plan. While in the U.S. the company is known more in ethanol circles than biodiesel, Abengoa holds a large biodiesel production asset in Cadiz, Spain.

According to Abengoa’s website, Abengoa Bioenergía San Roque S.A. is the holding company of the 59 MMgy biodiesel plant built on property next to the Gibraltar Refinery owned by Compañía Española de Petróleos S.A.U. (Cepsa), in the industrial estate of Palmones de San Roque.

Abengoa states its San Roque biodiesel plant is designed to process soy, rapeseed and palm oils, and 100 percent of the biodiesel produced at the facility is sent to the Cepsa refinery.

Abengoa has been shedding its U.S. assets for months, and now it appears the company’s biodiesel plant in Spain is next. Cristina Garcia Foguet, the corporate communications person at Cepsa, told me this morning that Cepsa has presented an offer for Abengoa’s San Roque biodiesel plant, “as we are interested in the asset,” she says. “We can also confirm that the judge has issued a court order—but is not a final court order—[so] there is a time for submitting claims and new offers.”

Stay tuned to BiodieselMagazine.com for future updates on this strategic investment in a biodiesel production asset by an oil refiner.