Van Der Horst focuses on $42m biodiesel plant

22 February 2008 08:12  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Van Der Horst Biodiesel (VDHB), to be acquired by Singapore-based GKE International, will focus on construction of a biodiesel plant in Johore, Malaysia, with a second proposed plant in Singapore still awaiting approval from the local authorities, said company CEO Peter Cheng on Friday.

 

Last year VDHB planned to start construction of a jatropha-based biodiesel plant on Singapore’s Jurong island, followed by the plant in Johore “but those plans have now changed”, said Cheng.

 

“We are now focused first on Johore. We have secured an eight hectare plot of land to construct a Singapore dollars S$60m ($42.6m) plant with a capacity of 200,000 tonnes/year,” he added.

 

The company might look into leasing or buying existing unused plants on Jurong island as space there was “fully booked”, GKE CEO Neo Cheow Hui said, adding  the proposals were still at a tentative stage.

 

VDHB was currently in talks with the Jurong Town Corporation (JTC) to secure land for the construction of a biodiesel plant there by 2012, said Cheng.

 

“The JTC has not given any indication of when approval will come through,” Neo said.

 

Construction of the Johore plant would begin in two-three months after “ironing out tax matters and forming a new company”, he added.

 

 “The costing in Johore, for land, storage, port, jetty is cheaper,”said Cheng, adding the plant was expected to be completed by the end of 2009.

 

The S$13m acquisition of Van Der Horst Biodiesel by supply chain and logistics firm GKE is expected to be completed by the end of this month, he said. The sale agreement was signed almost a year ago.

 

“We don’t see any profits from the acquisition for the next two years at least,” Neo said, adding revenues were bound to be affected by the rising cost of raw materials.  

 

“But the segments will also be synergistic because the biodiesel plants will need back-up logistics support and transportation when they become operational,” he said.

 

VDBH was targeting customers such as Shell, ExxonMobil and SPC for sale of its jatropha-based biodiesel, Neo said.

 

VDHB is a joint venture of Van Der Horst Engineering and the Institute of Environmental Science and Engineering (IESE), a technological arm of the Nanyang Technological Institute (NTU) of Singapore

 

($1 = S$1.4)

 

For more on biodiesel see Simon Robinson's Big Biofuels Blog 

By: Arujnee J Ram
+65 6780 4359

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