Aemetis, Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.; www.aemetis.com) announced that its Universal Biofuels subsidiary has completed a two-year upgrade of the Kakinada, India biodiesel and glycerin plant. The upgrades to the Kakinada plant included installation of a pre-treatment unit to process lower-cost and waste feedstock into oil; expansion of boiler and other utility capacities; and implementation of environmental systems to enable full production of 50 million gallons per year of biodiesel and bio-oil while simultaneously operating the biodiesel, pretreatment and glycerin refining units.
“The Aemetis team in India is executing on a rapid increase in production and revenues this year to meet growing domestic market demand for biofuels in a fast-growing economy,” stated Eric McAfee, Chairman and CEO of Aemetis. “As the only US company producing biofuels in India, Aemetis built and has now fully upgraded our India biodiesel and refined glycerin plant to use low cost feedstocks to become a leader in the rapidly expanding India biofuels market.”
“The innovative feedstock pre-treatment unit developed and installed at the Kakinada plant provides a sustainable cost advantage and produces lower carbon biofuels to supply the growing India domestic market for biodiesel and refined glycerin, as well as export markets,” stated Sanjeev Gupta, Managing Director of Universal Biofuels. “Expanding our steam and power requirements to enable the full operation of the new feedstock pretreatment unit along with our existing biodiesel and glycerin refining units required a substantial investment of time and specialized technical expertise. The entire plant is now capable of operating at 50 million gallons per year of biodiesel capacity using valuable lower cost, lower carbon and waste feedstocks.”
“Importantly, this extensive upgrade to the Kakinada plant was achieved without issuing additional stock or otherwise diluting existing shareholders of Aemetis,” Mr. McAfee noted. “Aemetis continues to execute on funding and building projects that generate highly valued, low carbon biofuels primarily from waste or reused materials.”
In the first three quarters of 2018, the India biodiesel plant produced about 15,200 metric tons of biodiesel during the plant upgrade construction. After the expansion announced today, current Kakinada plant capacity is approximately 50 million gallons (about 165,000 metric tons) of biodiesel and bio-oil production capacity per year, and approximately 5 million gallons (18,000 metric tons) of glycerin refining capacity per year. The average price of biodiesel sold at the India plant in year 2018 was about $3.00 per gallon ($900 per metric ton) and glycerin was about $1,000 per metric ton.