Neste oil to build $1 billion biodiesel plant in Rotterdam Holland

Neste Oil has announced plans to build a new biomass-to-liquid diesel plant in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The plant will produce what the company calls NExBTL renewable diesel fuel at the rate of 800,000 tonnes per year after it begins operating in 2011. Neste will spend about €670 million (a little over $1 billion at current exchange rates) on the facility which will use Neste's processes to convert a mix of palm and rapeseed oils and animal fat into a high-quality diesel fuel. Neste already has a smaller plant in Finland using this process with another one the same size as the Dutch plant that was announced for Singapore last fall. The NExBTL fule is claimed to reduce total life cycle CO₂ emissions by 40-60 percent compared to petroleum diesel. Neste also has a variety of ongoing research projects to use non-food vegetable oils, wood waste and algae for diesel fuel production.
[Source: Neste Oil]