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A NEW biorefinery will be built in the UK to produce 200m l/y of bioethanol and 175,000t/y of high protein animal feed.

A partnership called Future Fuels owned by renewable investment fund Future Capital Partners and engineering firm Simon Carves say it’s looking for investors to help it build a new plant to process wheat into ethanol to meet coming fuel standards.

The EU Renewable Energy Directive and the UK Road Transport Fuel Obligation state that by 2020, 23b l or 13% of all UK transport fuel must be ethanol. As the UK currently has only two large-scale biofuel production plants and produces just 2b l/y of ethanol, Future Fuels says new facilities are needed to fill the supply gap.

The company plans to raise $236m ($381m) in project finance – £40m from investors and the rest borrowed from banks. The money will be used to buy land and build the plant, which will be operated by biofuel start-up Vireol. Future Capital Partners says an investment bank has already agreed to pay £1b to purchase the plant’s first ten years of fuel output and a commodities trading firm has made a £500m commitment over the same period for the feed.

The plant will produce ethanol from excess feed wheat that the UK currently exports to Europe for animal feed.