Neste Oil and StoraEnso in joint Finnish forest products bio-fuel venture

Finnish wood products and an integrated paper, packaging company Stora Enso and oil refiners Neste Oil have agreed to build Finland's first factory in Varkaus , SE Finland to wood into bio fuel.

Neste are currently commissioning their 1st biofuel plant to produce 170,000 t/a of NExBTL Renewable Diesel, from vegetable oil and animal fat at its Porvoo refinery in Finland ... a 2nd similar plant is also under construction. The original plant has been delayed due to a fire and will be on line in April - total cost are in the region of Euro 200Mn.

The company have scrapped plans for a Plant in a joint bio-fuel venture with Total at Dunkirk with but are negotiating to open a biofuel plant in Vienna with OMV, Austria's largest public company.

Using felling scraps, small trees, and stumps , the wood-based biomass will first be converted into crude biodiesel, it will then go to the Neste Oil refinery in Porvoo, for refining .

The Euro 14 Mn. Varkaus plant , due to start up in 2008, will also produce heat and electricity for use locally and also use a process developed by Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT) for converting the bio-mass. They have been testing a pilot plant in a 4 year Government funded project. The in house plant will use the Fischer-Tropsch process to produce crude biodiesel from gas which will equal the energy needed to heat 4,300 homes and cut local carbon dioxide emissions significantly.

Whilst Neste Oil has developed expertise in developing biofuels on plant oils and animal fats CEO Risto Rinne sees the need to use a non food raw material . Varkaus was selected as the first plant as it has has a million cubic metres of biomass within a radius of 80 Km., and three times that in a radius of 120 kilometres."

Stora Enso sees huge potential for the process in Finland and envisage 3 such plants could be built in connection with Stora Enso sites in Finland, and believe a total of 6 plants could be set up within Finland.... with the opportunity to also export the process.