Stora Enso and Neste Oil end biodiesel project in Varkaus

Stora Enso and Neste Oil will not progress with their plans to build a biodiesel plant in Varkaus, Finland. Cooperation between the two companies is to be continued in the area of other bio-based products.

Stora Enso and Neste Oil have decided not to build a biodiesel refinery in Varkaus, Finland. The companies explained that the biodiesel plant did not qualify for funding from the European Union’s NER300 (New Entrants’s Reserve) programme, promoting innovative technologies in the renewable energies sector, and that the project would be stopped.

In June 2009, a demonstration plant was commisioned at Stora Enso’s Varkaus mill to research on the production of biodiesel using Biomass-to-Liquid (BtL) technology. In the second phase of the project the Stora Enso and Neste Oil considered to build an industrial-scale biofuels plant producing up to 100,000 tpy of wax, to be further processed into biodiesel.

The companies explained that they have calculated the costs of building an industrial-scale biodiesel refinery in Varkaus in a careful and realistic way, coming to the conclusion that the project would involve substantial investments. Stora Enso and Neste Oil would not have pursued the project in Varkaus even with public funding from the NER300 programme, the CEOs of the two companies Jouko Karvinen and Matti Lievonen said in the joint press statement.