The largest biorefinery in the European Union could be operational in the first half of 2009.
The refinery, which UK biofuels firm Ensus is building in northeast England, will make bioethanol and a protein rich animal feed co-product from about 1.2 to 1.3 million tonnes of UK wheat.
'We are well into construction now and we will be producing ethanol and animal feed in Q1or Q2 next year,' Ensus CEO Alwyn Hughes comments.
The plant will be the first major bioethanol plant in the UK, producing around 330,000 tonnes of the biofuel, far larger than the current leader, a British Sugar facility in eastern England with an annual capacity of around 55,000 tonnes.
The Ensus plant will also produce 350,000 tonnes of animal feed.
It will consume a substantial amount of the UK's exportable wheat surplus. The UK traditionally has an exportable wheat surplus of about 2.5 million tonnes.
Ensus, a start-up company which was acquired last year by two US private equity funds, the Carlyle Group and Riverstone, has a contract to sell all the bioethanol produced in Wilton to oil major Shell.
The plant is expected to supply one-third of UK demand for ethanol under the UK's Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) which mandates that 5% of motor fuel should come from renewable resources by 2010.
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