Biodiesel influx means game's over for synthetic glycerin

Good thing I never got into the synthetic glycerin market. Thanks to the current boom in biodiesel production, a byproduct of making biodiesel, glycerin, is currently available in massive quantities. This means that makers of synthetic glycerin (like Dow and Solvay) have found little market for their wares and glycerin prices have dropped by about two-thirds in the past five years and are still headed down. Kline & Company (of $44,000 biodiesel report fame) is setting out to discover just what's going on in the glycerin market thanks to biodiesel. One Kline director said that, "Biodiesel producers have now become serious competitors in the glycerin market by selling a byproduct that they could just give away. If they can sell it, the economics of new biodiesel projects look even better, which could further boost the number of new facilities that come online."

[Source: Kline & Company]