Growers in the north-east can expect to find themselves at the centre of the UK’s biofuels industry, but Government action remains central to success.

That’s the message from a dinner organised by North East Biofuels (NEB) in Tony Blair’s Sedgefield constituency last week.

The event brought together 350 key players in the agricultural, chemical, energy and transport sectors to help promote biofuels supply chains for transport, industrial and domestic use for the benefit of the north-east region.

The first gathering of its kind in the UK, most who attended felt it marked a step-change for the UK biofuels industry. “If farmers in the rest of the UK could see what you’re doing,” NFU deputy president Peter Kendall said in his address. “I don’t think any other region in the UK could have done this.”

NEB, a cluster of companies and organisations committed to the development of a biofuels industry in the region, has been actively promoting and facilitating key partnerships, chairman John Reynolds said.

To date, that effort had resulted in more than 500m litres of a 5% blended biofuel being marketed and sold by Teesside-based Petroplus, the construction of a 250,000t-a-year biodiesel plant on Seal Sands due to be operational in the third quarter of this year, and investment by SembCorp in the Wilton ‘Ten’ recycled wood and short-rotation coppice power plant.

“We’ve also developed an economic model for the full biodiesel supply chain ‘from seed to tank’ in the north-east, advanced the case for an oilseeds crushing plant on Teesside, and in 2004 there was the launch of ‘One Green Route’ a developing network of forecourts supplying biodiesel blends,” Mr Reynolds explained.

Mr Reynolds called on the Government to stop dithering over the implementation of the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (ReTFO) which would require a minimum percentage of biofuels to be included in road diesel and petrol.

“What is urgently required is for the Government to announce now that an obligation will be introduced at a given level on a specific date,” he said. “Given a clear statement by Government, the fuels industry will know what it has got to do, and will start to plan accordingly.”

YOUR VIEW: Are you involved in biofuels? Let us know what you’re doing and how the industry can persuade the Government to adopt ReTFO, by email