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Climate change: Towngas offshoot turns waste oil into green fuels in China and Malaysia to meet strong European demand
- Profitable Hong Kong start-up Ecoceres plans to build a second plant to turn waste oil into low-carbon fuel for aircraft and vehicles
- The planned plant in Malaysia will turn used cooking oil and waste from palm-oil mills into up to 350,000 tonnes of low-carbon fuel a year
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Ecoceres, a unit of local gas distributor Hong Kong and China Gas (Towngas), will soon start building a second plant to turn waste oil into low-carbon fuel for aircraft and vehicles, tapping strong demand for such fuels in Europe.
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The European Union has promoted green fuel adoption via regulation in recent years to meet its climate-mitigation ambitions, which has created ample opportunities for Ecoceres, said CEO Philip Siu Kam-shing.
“Now that our first plant in China is performing well, we are designing our second plant in Malaysia, which will soon proceed to the construction phase,” he told the Post. “Our aspiration is to become a global decarbonisation-solutions provider.”
The planned plant in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, near Singapore, will be able to produce 350,000 tonnes of low-carbon transportation fuel a year from used cooking oil and waste water from palm-oil mills. The plant is expected to take about two years to complete.
Siu declined to divulge the estimated investment, but said the plant is expected to cost substantially less than the US$400 million Ecoceres has raised from private-equity firm Bain Capital, which bought a stake in the company this month.
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