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S.A. may get biodiesel plant
By Vicki Vaughan
San Antonio Express-News - June 5, 2007
San Antonio could be home to a new biodiesel plant by the end of this year.
A Florida company, Xenerga Inc., says it soon will partner with investors from San Antonio to build a $1.95 million plant here, one of several planned for Texas.
"We've got big plans in Texas, and we expect San Antonio to be in the first group of plants to be built," said Dave Jarrett, chief communications officer for Xenerga, a privately held company based in Orlando.
"Three or four" groups from San Antonio have met with Xenerga, Jarrett said, but he declined to identify the composition of the groups. Most are businesspeople, he said.
Once Xenerga and a San Antonio group decide to be partners, the plans for the biodiesel refinery are expected to move ahead quickly, with the San Antonio group securing land for a plant that could produce biodiesel in late 2007 or early 2008, he said.
Xenerga also is meeting with investors from Houston and Dallas and building plants in those cities, Jarrett said. And the company has plans beyond Texas; it wants to build small biodiesel plants in most major metropolitan areas of the country.
Each plant would be capable of producing more than 5 million gallons of biodiesel a year, or about 15,000 gallons a day. Xenerga's partner would own the equipment, while Xenerga would provide the feedstock and take a royalties percentage from the sale of biodiesel.
"It's a partnership, not a franchise," Jarrett said.
The Xenerga plants will use waste oil and animal byproducts to produce biodiesel, which is refined from vegetable oils — usually soybean oil — or rendered animal fats.
The biodiesel industry, boosted by government mandates that encourage more use of renewable fuels, is growing quickly. There are now about 140 biodiesel plants in operation, and "at last count, there are about 80 under construction," said Amber Pearson, a spokeswoman for the National Biodiesel Board.
Biodiesel producers typically sell their fuel to a wholesaler or a distributor, Pearson said.
In most cases, biodiesel is sold as a blendstock to produce fuels known as B20, 20 percent biodiesel fuel, or B5, 5 percent biodiesel.
Xenerga hopes to take advantage of the industry growth by executing what Jarrett said is a simple business plan: building turnkey biodiesel refineries in light industrial areas on 1/2-acre to 1-acre tracts. The biodiesel plants can be assembled quickly because they are prefabricated refineries manufactured in a plant in Germany, Jarrett said.
"They're way ahead of us in Europe in producing biodiesel," Jarrett said.
Xenerga expects to open its first biodiesel plant south of Orlando this summer.
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