Two hundred guests, including Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Teo Chee Hean, joined the Finnish Minister of Ownership Steering, Jyri Häkämies, to celebrate Neste Oil's opening of its biodiesel production plant on March 8, 2011, in Singapore. It has a production capacity of 800,000 tons per year, and the company, which invested some 550 million euros in the plant, says it is the world's largest for biodiesel.
The Finnish firm already has two biodiesel refineries back home in Porvoo with a cumulative capacity of 380,000 tons per year. Neste Oil also plans to complete a plant in Rotterdam, which is expected to be as large as the one in Singapore and go into operation in mid-2011. The firm says it will then have a production capacity of around two million tons of biodiesel per year. In Singapore, Neste Oil produces its biodiesel brand called NExBTL, which is sold in Europe and North America.
But according to a report last week in Business Times, a third of the firm's biodiesel production has not been sold. But the firm's CEO Matti Lievonen says he expects sales to pick up in the second quarter. The company posted 36 million euros in losses for renewable fuel in Q1 2011, after a loss of 17 million in Q1 2010. (diko) / cm)
