Ultex Tandarei, one of the leading players on the market of vegetable oils, owned by businessman Vasile Nitescu, has started biodiesel production. In the next decades, biodiesel will account for a significant share of the world's fuel consumption.
Ultex produces biodiesel under the Biodil brand, being the first oil-processing plant to make biodiesel on the local market.
"The biodiesel business is a much more lucrative business at the moment, backed by the European Union directives, in order to see crude oil imports and pollution go down," said Ultex chairman Vasile Nitescu. He specified that bottled oil sales would drop, which will also generate a drop in the company's market share.
According to European norms, biofuel should account for 2% of the total consumption in Romania in 2007 (230,000 tonnes), and reach 20% of the fuel consumption by 2020. Biodiesel is mainly obtained from soy and rapeseed, this being one of the reasons why vegetable oil producing plants can also enter the biodiesel segment.
"We had losses worth over 2 million euros in the first half of this year due to the purchasing price for sunflower. We decided to focus on processing more soy beans and less sunflower seeds in the new campaign," Nitescu added.
The company owns the Ultex, Solio and Ulei de Tandarei brands, the latter being launched last year on the market of vegetable oils, and Biodil, on the market of unconventional fuel.
"We have so far invested 600,000 euros in our first biodiesel equipment, and in April next year we will finalise a new 4 million-euro investment, which will boost our monthly production capacity to 6,000 tonnes," added Nitescu.
The Tandarei-based plant currently produces 1,500 tonnes of biodiesel per month, with this capacity to double by the end of the year. According to the Ultex shareholder, starting April 2007, the plant will reach a capacity of 6,000 tonnes monthly.
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