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Rix plans 110m ho-diesel plant
Page 10
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• by Guy Sheppard Hauliers could soon be filling their tanks with diesel which includes a dash of environmentally-friendly fuel made from vegetable oil.
Hull-based Rix Group plans to build a £10m bio-diesel plant to help meet a government commitment to increase the use of fuels made from renewable resources.
Managing director Peter Turner says: "We envisage it will be blended with petroleum dery to make some sort of cocktail of which 5% is bio-diesel. In that respect it won't have any influence on the price," Turner reveals that bindiesel was mixed with low sulphur diesel when stocks ran low during last years fuel blockades and nobody noticed the difference.
The Rix plant—the first of its kind in the UK—will produce up to 50,000 tonnes of the fuel annually; it is due to be completed within a year of planning permission being granted.
The European Commission wants to expand the use of bio fuels in transport (CM 11-17 October) but Turner says nobody is yet making bio-diesel commercially in the UK: 'We have a huge catching-up job to do. The government has set itself a timetable by 2020 when 20% of automotive fuel is to be manufactured from renewable resources."
• The Rix announcement coincides with the opening of the UK's largest compressed natural gas (CH) filling station. The site, in Crewe, was supported by a 1100,000 grant from the Energy Savings Trust and was commissioned by Caratrans which hauls automotive parts from the Vauxhall plant at Ellesmere Port to Purfteet In Essex.
The Caratrans fleet already includes 14 CtiC-powered trucks and Is due to be running 26 by next month.
John Baldwin, managing director of Lattice Energy Systems—which built the filling station—says the 38-tonne ERF
tractors used by Caratrar cost an extra £30,000 becaw they are 0110-powered, bi £18,000 of this is paid for in goi ernment grants. "Diesel cosi 50% more than CNC so yi pretty soon get the capit back," he points out.