OFI September/October 2018

OILS & FATS INTERNATIONAL SEPT/OCT 2018 â–ª VOL 34 NO 7

SUSTAINABILITY Flight path to alternative fuel

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Science behind Technology

CONTENTS

OILS & FATS INTERNATIONAL

IN THIS ISSUE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

FEATURES

Plant & Technology

32

Speciality Oils

18

Rendering

22

NEWS & EVENTS

The latest projects, technology and process news and developments

Drivers for high oleics High oleic oils offer various benefits, but several factors limit their production

Plant and equipment round-up

Palm Oil

36

The road to success Maintaining oil palm plantation roads is essential in ensuring high oil quality

Circle of life The European rendering industry performs a valuable role in processing animal materials into fat and protein products

Comment

3

Gene editing ruling sparks debate in EU

News

4 Instrumentation

38 Processing & Technology

26

European farmers to receive aid to cope with drought conditions

Global round-up

Biofuel News

The latest instrumentation news and developments

10

From speciality to commodity

Sustainability

New crystallisation and separation technologies help in meeting the demand for cocoa butter alternatives

41

Flight path to alternative fuel Sustainable jet fuel is no longer a concept but a pending commercial reality

Avril resumes biodiesel production at 100% capacity

Transport News

12

US trade measures to cause chaos in shipping markets

Biotech News

14

EU counts gene edited crops as GMOs

Renewable Materials News

16

Balanced glycerine market in second half of 2018

Diary of Events

17

Listing of international events

Statistics

46

www.ofimagazine.com

Contents SepOct18.indd 1

Latest market data

OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

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EDITOR'S COMMENT

OILS & FATS INTERNATIONAL

VOL 34 NO 7 SEPTEMBER/ OCTOBER 2018

EDITORIAL: Editor: Serena Lim serenalim@quartzltd.com +44 (0)1737 855066 Assistant Editor: Ilari Kauppila ikauppila@quartzltd.com +44 (0)1737 855157 SALES: Sales Manager: Mark Winthrop-Wallace markww@quartzltd.com +44 (0)1737 855114 Sales Consultant: Anita Revis anitarevis@quartzltd.com +44 (0)1737 855068 PRODUCTION: Production Editor: Carol Baird carolbaird@quartzltd.com CORPORATE: Managing Director: Steve Diprose stevediprose@quartzltd.com +44 (0)1737 855164 SUBSCRIPTIONS: Elizabeth Barford subscriptions@quartzltd.com +44 (0)1737 855028 Subscriptions, Quartz House, 20 Clarendon Road, Redhill, Surrey RH1 1QX, UK © 2018, Quartz Business Media ISSN 0267-8853 WWW.OFIMAGAZINE.COM

A member of FOSFA Oils & Fats International (USPS No: 020-747) is published eight times/year by Quartz Business Media Ltd and distributed in the USA by DSW, 75 Aberdeen Road, Emigsville PA 17318-0437.

Periodicals postage paid at Emigsville, PA. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Oils & Fats c/o PO Box 437, Emigsville, PA 17318-0437 Published by Quartz Business Media Ltd Quartz House, 20 Clarendon Road, Redhill, Surrey RH1 1QX, UK oilsandfats@quartzltd.com +44 (0)1737 855000 Printed by Pensord Press, Gwent, Wales

Gene editing ruling sparks debate in EU Scientists and plant breeders have reacted with dismay to the European Court of Justice (ECJ)’s recent ruling that gene edited crops should be subject to the same stringent rules as conventional genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The new gene editing (GE) technologies essentially edit a plant or animal’s existing genome, compared with old-school GMOs where foreign genetic material is inserted (see ‘Fashioning designer genes’, OFI July/August 2018).

The ECJ says these new gene-edited organisms are GMOs because the techniques used to alter them happen in a way “that does not occur naturally” (see news story, p14).

Environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace have welcomed the move, saying the ruling ensures that new GE crops will be fully labelled and tested before being released into the countryside.

It is worth noting that the ECJ judgment doesn’t necessarily mean the EU can’t grow or use GE crops – just that they will be subject to the same torturous approval process for cultivation, or food and feed use, that has been in place since 2011. In effect, however, it is highly unlikely that GE crops will be grown in Europe. Under the currrent regime, only one variety of GM maize is grown in Europe and only the large biotech giants could potentially afford to apply for new GE crop approval. But global seed giants Bayer and BASF have already indicated that they will not develop GM or GE crops for commercial use in Europe. The European Seed Association says that much of GE’s potential will likely be lost for Europe.

In terms of GM food, the EU imports very little. So it is the feed sector that will feel the greatest impact of the ruling. The EU needs more than 36M tonnes/year of equivalent soyabean to feed its livestock but only produces 14M tonnes/year of soyabean or 30% of its needs. Any new GE crops will need to be approved for feed use and the European Feed Manufacturers’ Federation (FEFAC) has already said it is concerned that the ruling could effectively block EU market access to imports of US soya and other feed grains.

In a wider sense, the ECJ decision builds on existing concerns that Europe’s biotech sector will lag behind the rest of the world. Europe will certainly be at odds with countries such as China, where the government is pouring funds into GE, and the USA – where the USDA has already decided in several cases that GE products will not be regulated as GMOs. GE is not a magic bullet as it can only express or suppress a trait already inherent in a plant. In addition, traits such as drought or pesticide resistance depend on the combined workings of a variety of genes, with environmental factors, such as heat and moisture, having an effect as well. However, with a growing world population and increasing pressure on scare resources, such as land and water, farmers need to have access to new crops with better disease resistance, higher yields, enhanced nutrition, or resilience to extreme weather like drought.

The argument surrounding GMOs has never been solely about science. It has been about perception, potential risk versus reward and a consumer’s right to know and choose. GEs simply continue the debate that GMOs first raised.

@oilsandfatsint

Oils & Fats International

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NEWS IN BRIEF ARGENTINA: A new tax on crop exports of four pesos per dollar will be introduced to addresss the country’s economic crisis, including rising inflation and interest rates and a falling currency, Bloomberg reported on 3 September.

The new tax is in stark contrast to the anti-tariff measures that President Mauricio Marcri has implemented since taking office in 2015.

“We know it’s a really bad tax that goes against what we want to spur, which is more exports,” Marcri said in a televised speech. “But I ask you to understand that it’s an emergency.”

The US Department of Agriculture says Argentina is the world’s third largest soyabean and corn exporter, and the top soyabean meal and oil exporter.

EU expands use of microalgae oil The European Commission (EC) has approved an expansion of the uses of microalgae oil derived from Schizochytrium sp in food supplements, food intended for infants and young children, special medical applications and total diet replacement for weight control, Nutraingredients wrote on 23 July.

The EC also set out specific conditions under which the algal oil could be used. In food supplements, maximum levels of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) – which is plentiful in the oil – could not exceed 250mg DHA/day for general population and 250mg DHA/ day for pregnant and lactating women. Spreadable fats and dressings could contain up to 600mg/100g of the algal oil, while cooking fats had a maximum limit of 360mg/100g.

The microalgae had been promoted as a sustainable alternative to fish oil.

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European farmers to receive aid to cope with drought conditions The EU Commission (EC) has implemented two measures to help farmers struggling with the ongoing drought conditions in Europe, caused by a prolonged summer heatwave.

The first measure would enable farmers to receive 70% of their direct support payment and 85% of payments under rural development by mid-October, instead of the usual December date, to aid cash flows, wrote Platts on 3 August.

The second measure granted exemptions from specific greening requirements, allowing animal feed production on land that would normally not be permitted for such use.

The EC said that further derogations were under consideration to allow for more flexible feed production in support of livestock farming.

The moves provided support for farmers in addition to that given under the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The CAP allowed for the provision of aid packages valued at up to 80% of the damage caused by drought, or 100% when a member state confirmed the drought situation as a “natural disaster”, Platts said.

The high temperatures and next to no rainfall had resulted in feedstock and grains prices rising through the roof across much of Europe.

German post-farm rapeseed prices for the 2018 crop had already increased substantially since the beginning of July, rising by €11 (US$12.80) to €347/tonne (US$404).

Rapeseed prices had risen by 6% since hitting this year’s lowest point at the end of April.

However, German oilseeds trade association Union zur Förderung von Oel- und Proteinpflanzen (UFOP) said the price developments would make rapeseed more interesting in the oncoming sowing season.

The situation had also impacted biofuels markets, with rising futures prices eating away at production margins, wrote Platts. With biodiesel, rapeseed farmers were already using their winter stocks and some crushers were looking to maximise meal production at the expense of oil output, which Platts said could lead to a tightening market.

“Rapeseed production could decline 10% to around 19.7M tonnes from the previous year,” said UFOP. “This would be the lowest value since 2012.”

Soya boom threatens Brazil’s Cerrado savannah

Continuing conversion of Brazil’s Cerrado savannah into farmland is directing deforestation away from the Amazon rainforest but, at the same time, may be fuelling climate change and causing damage to watersheds.

The Cerrado had seen an area of 105,000km2 deforested since 2008 as it was being converted into farmland, which had made Brazil the world’s largest exporter of soyabeans, Reuters reported on 28 August.

The deforested area in the Cerrado, home

to 5% of all species on Earth, was 50% more than in the Amazon during the same period.

The deforestation rate had slowed down since the early 2000s when Brazil’s “soyabean boom” was gaining speed, but savannah was still being converted to feed Chinese demand for meat and grains, said Reuters.

China’s trade war with the USA had seen Brazilian soyabean exports rise 18% through the first seven months of 2018 and soya plantings in the Matopiba region had more than doubled in the past decade.

However, the farming boom was fuelling climate change, with 248M tonnes of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere from the Cerrado in 2016 due to destruction of surface vegetation, according to Brazilian conservation group Climate Observatory.

Additionally, the bare soil surface was being washed away into small water streams, turning them silty and unsuitable as potable water.

More than 60 companies – including Unilever, McDonald’s and Walmart – had signed the Cerrado Manifesto to stop deforestation.

Unilever and Walmart had committed to achieving zero deforestation in their supply chains by 2020, while the global grain trader Louis Dreyfus Co (LDC) became, in June, the first commodity trader to stop buying soyabeans from newly deforested land. www.ofimagazine.com

06/09/2018 12:15

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NEWS ADM buys Brazilian soyabean processing facilities Global agritrader Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) has agreed to purchase various assets of Brazilian agri-food firm Algar Agro, including two oilseed processing facilities, to enhance its position in the Brazilian meal and bottled oils markets.

ADM would acquire integrated crush and oil refining and bottling facilities in Uberlândia in the state of Minas Gerais and in Porto Franco in the state of Maranhão, reported World Grain on 16 August.

The company said it would also gain access to an extensive origination and storage silo network throughout northeastern and southeastern Brazil.

According to ADM, demand for bottled oils and oilseed meal was growing in the

IN BRIEF ARGENTINA: US agritrader Bunge is planning to close down a soyabean crushing plant at the Port of Ramallo in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Workers’ Federation of the Industrial Oilseed Complex, representing employees at Argentine soya plants, said the Ramallo plant’s 60 employees had been informed of an impending termination of their jobs, wrote Reuters on 25 July.

The union was planning to protest the plant’s shuttering with a strike that could influence different port areas in Argentina.

USA: The US Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board has found that certain patents related to krill and krill oil held by Norwegian Aker Biomarine are unpatentable.

The patent authority’s finding followed petitions by Aker’s compatriot biotech firm Rimfrost, also active in krill oil production, Rimfrost said in a 22 August statement.

The two patents the US authorities invalidated were used by Aker to pursue legal action against Rimfrost, but all challenges had now been withdrawn by Aker.

6 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOEBR 2018

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northeast and southeast regions of Brazil.

The projected growth offered the company good market access with its new acquisition.

Greg Morris, senior vice president and president of ADM’s oilseed business, said the acquisition of Algar Agro continued the global expansion trend that also included the launch of the ADM-Cargill joint venture in Egypt and various enhancements to its European and North American processing operations.

“With the addition of these new plants in Brazil, we are further enhancing and strengthening our global network at a time when both the near- and long-term outlook for global meal demand continues

to be strong,” said Morris.

Algar Agro said that with the sale of the oilseed facilities, it was exiting the soyabean crushing and trading segment and would instead concentrate on its grains production business, Algar Farming.

ADM’s current oilseed operations in Brazil include soya processing plants in Rondonópolis, Campo Grande, Ipameri, Jeacaba and Uberlândia; a sunflower plant in Campo Novo dos Percis; biodiesel refineries in Rondonópolis and Joacaba; and various storage facilities throughout the country with a total capacity of 2.2M tonnes.

ADM sells the Concórdia, Corcovado and Vitaliv cookin oil brands in Brazil.

Drought impacts food security in Central America

The South American drought that has resulted in low soyabean production in Argentina is threatening food security in Central America, a risk that is now made worse by a looming El Niño.

According to a 24 August report by the United Nations

agencies Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), the countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras had lost roughly 280,000ha of soyabeans and corn due to this summer’s severe drought, reported World

Grain on 29 August.

The crop losses had increased food prices for the entire population and affected the food security of more than 2M people, FAO and WFP found.

The UN agencies also said the El Niño weather phenomenon could strike the countries between September and December and could significantly impact the second crop cycle.

Julio Berdegué, regional representative of the FAO, said it was urgent to improve the climate resilience of people living in Central America.

Soyabean production in Argentina was expected to fall by 16M tonnes due to the drought.

Investors urge RSPO to strengthen its sustainability criteria More than 90 institutional investors – representing assets worth over US$6.7 trillion – are urging the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) to strengthen its sustainability certification criteria for palm oil production.

In a letter to the RSPO, the investors stated their concern over the “relevance and effectiveness” of the RSPO in the current palm oil marketplace, wrote Business Green on 13 August.

Roughly 19% of the world’s palm oil was currently certified by the RSPO, but there was a disconnect between leading palm oil sustainability commitments from corporations and the perceived weaker standards set out by the RSPO criteria, the letter read.

The RSPO was currently drafting new sustainability guidelines for November, but the investor

group felt the current draft standards did not include sufficient protection for peatlands and high carbon stock forests.

In addition, they said the RSPO did not address labour concerns, such as children’s and workers’ rights, in a sufficient manner.

In response, the RSPO said it welcomed the feedback, adding that it had received more than 10,000 comments during the consultation period for its new sustainability requirements.

“We must collaborate with, and gain consensus from, our stakeholders, NGOs, growers, manufacturers and all others alike. In addition to reviewing the comments related to our no deforestation standards, we are currently in active discussions with the High Carbon Stock Approach,” said RSPO. www.ofimagazine.com

06/09/2018 12:15

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NEWS IN BRIEF INDIA: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has given the green light for Adani Wilmar to purchase the struggling Indian edible oil producer Ruchi Soya.

Adani Wilmar, which sold cooking oils under the Fortune brand in India, emerged as the highest bidder after Ruchi Soya entered a corporate insolvency resolution process in December 2017, wrote just-food on 16 August.

Indian media sources said that Adani Wilmar’s US$854M bid, filed on 2 May, was approved on 10 August, which would clear the way for Adani Wilmar to begin formal acquisition procedures, just-food added.

CHINA: Malaysian palm oil producer Sime Darby Plantation has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Chinese Cofco Group to collaborate on several palm oil ventures.

The MoU included joint research into the health effects of palm oil, developing the capacity for value added products and establishing joint sales and marketing activities to promote them in China, reported Borneo Post on 22 August.

Sime Darby and Cofco aimed to create more demand for certified sustainable palm oil and increase trade volumes between them.

EU soya imports from USA skyrocket The EU’s imports of US soyabeans have skyrocketed 283% compared to the year before, bringing the bloc’s share of total US soyabean exports from 9% in 2016/17 to 37% in 2017/18.

The rise in imports followed the 25 July joint statement between EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and US President Donald Trump, in which they agreed that the EU and the USA would work to increase trade in soyabeans, wrote World Grain on 1 August.

“The EU can import more soyabeans from the USA and this is happening as we speak. This is a win-win situation for European and American citizens,” said Juncker.

In addition to soyabeans, soya meal imports also rose, with 185,000 tonnes imported in July 2018, a massive 3,337% jump compared with July 2017.

The increase brought the USA’s share of total EU soya meal imports up from 0.3% in 2017 to 13% in July 2018.

World Grain said the EU had also implemented a bi-monthly reporting mechanism on the evolution of soyabean trade with the USA, which would include information on import volumes, US share of total EU soya imports and price movements.

The European Commission (EC) said the EU needed soya as a protein for animal feed and it currently imported roughly 30M tonnes/year of soya due to being unable to produce enough beans on its own.

US soyabeans and soya meal were the most competitively priced feed options for European importers and industrial end users, the EC added.

Dairy could lower risk of cardiovascular disease

A new study by the UTHealth School of Public Health has discovered one particular fatty acid in dairy products – such as butter, milk and yoghurt – that could potentially lower the risk of dying from cardiovascular ailments, reported Newsweek on 16 July.

The research team began evaluating 3,000 adults

aged 65 or older in 1992 by measuring the levels of three dairy fatty acids – phospholipid pentadecanoic, heptadecanoic and trans-palmitoleic acids – in their blood, which were then re-measured six and 13 years later.

The researchers discovered that none of the fatty acids were linked to a higher risk of dying, but heptadecanoic acid

was connected to a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

Additionally, those with higher levels of fatty acids, which the team believed could be a result of their dairy consumption, had a 42% lower risk of dying from stroke, the study found.

The study came at a time when US milk sales were expected to fall 11% between 2015 and 2020, while milk alternatives, such as soya and almond products, had seen their sales grow 61% in the past five years, based on data from Mintel.

Heart disease was the leading cause of death in the USA, claiming 610,000 lives a year, while 795,000 people experienced a stroke annually in the USA, Newsweek said.

Bunge Loders Croklaan changes palm oil product line to be low 3-MCPDE In anticipation of future EU legislation, vegetable oils and fats producer Bunge Loders Croklaan (BLC) has converted its entire palm oil food portfolio to have low 3-MCPDE levels.

In a scientific opinion earlier in the year, the European Food Safety Authority expressed its concerns over the presence of 3-monochloropropane diol esters (3-MCPDEs) and glycidyl esters (GEs) in refined vegetable oils and fats, BLC said on 28 August.

In March 2018, the EU set a regulation limiting GE content in foods to less than 1ppm and similar legislation on 3-MCPDE content was expected in the near future, although no exact date had been set.

Ahead of the upcoming regulation, BLC vice president for Europe Holger Riemensperger said the company had begun supply8 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

General News.indd 4

ing fully mitigated palm oil and palm derivatives on a large scale.

“We can deliver out entire food portfolio not only with low GE levels (<1ppm) but also with low 3-MCPDE levels (<2ppm). These levels are in line with the discussion paper developed by the EU Commission in June 2016,” said Riemensperger.

On 10 January, the EFSA raised the safe level of daily 3-MCPD intake from 0.8μg/kg of body weight to 2μg/kg of body weight, two-and-a-half times its previous limit but still only half of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) limit of 4μg/kg of body weight.

GEs and 3-MCPDEs are chemical compounds formed unintentionally during the refining process used in the production of vegetable oils, particularly palm oil. www.ofimagazine.com

06/09/2018 12:15

BIOFUEL NEWS Avril resumes biodiesel production at 100% capacity After limiting production earlier in the year, French biodiesel producer Avril has returned to running its plants at full capacity due to high petroleum oil prices and increasing demand.

The plants had been operating at full capacity since June, but continuing biodiesel imports from Argentina could still force the company to limit production, reported Reuters on 24 July.

Avril cut production at its oilseed processing unit Saipol

for six months in March, citing the large influx of Argentine imports after the EU’s 2017 removal of import taxes as the reason.

“We will renew the parttime work plan for another six months because even though there is some progress, Argentine biodiesel is still coming massively into Europe every month,” Jean-Philippe Puig, Avril CEO, told Reuters.

EU producers were hoping that the EU Commission would

impose new tariffs on Argentina in September, based on new allegations that the country was unfairly subsidising its biofuel industry.

As a positive turn, crude oil prices had climbed in the past months, mostly due to fears about possible US sanctions on Iran limiting oil supplies.

European buyers had also begun stockpiling biodiesel for the next year, anticipating higher prices following a new EU tax, said Reuters.

Earlier in July, unnamed industry sources told the news agency that Argentine biofuel sales to the EU had already halted due to the threat of new tariffs, which could leave 85% of the country’s biodiesel exports without viable markets.

In 2017, Avril produced 1.4M tonnes of biodiesel from a capacity of 1.8M tonnes and the company was expecting production to fall further this year due to the reduced output in March.

IN BRIEF

Sorghum OK’d as advanced biofuel feedstock

NETHERLANDS: UK biodiesel producer Argent Energy Group is set to acquire Dutch Simadan Group’s biodiesel production, tank storage and cleaning facilities in Amsterdam.

The deal was expected to close by early September, wrote Biodiesel Magazine on 20 July.

Simadan’s Biodiesel Amsterdam facility produced more than 100,000 tonnes/year of tallow-based biodiesel.

The acquisition marked Argent Energy’s first venture outside the UK, where the company operates a largescale commercial biodiesel facility using food and meat processing waste and sewer grease as feedstocks.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved using sorghum oil as an advanced biofuel and biodiesel feedstock under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler (pictured) announced the decision on 24 July after a meeting between the EPA, sorghum industry leaders and US senators and congressmen, reported DTN – The Progressive Farmer.

The EPA initially proposed approving sorghum last December, when it released an assessment proposal stating that using distillers sorghum oil as a biofuel product could

NETHERLANDS: UK biodiesel firm Greenergy has reached an agreement with tank terminal operator Oiltanking to purchase an idle manufacturing facility in Amsterdam.

Greenergy planned to convert the Amsterdam plant – built in 2010 but never commissioned – to process waste oils, alongside increasing its production capacity, the firm said on 19 July.

Oiltanking would provide Greenergy with storage facilities for feedstock materials and produced biodiesel.

NBB takes EPA to court over 2018 US biofuel volumes US biodiesel trade body National Biodiesel Board (NBB) has filed an opening brief in a lawsuit challenging the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) methodology in establishing biofuel volumes under the 2018 Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

The brief, submitted on 27 July, argued that the EPA had “unlawfully not accounted for all “hardship exemptions” granted to small refineries, including those granted retroactively, when it set the annual RFS volumes and Renewable Volume Obligations (RVOs), the NBB said.

“Unaccounted for small refinery exemptions reduce aggregate volumes and the EPA’s approach creates a new, de facto waiver authority contrary to the Congress’ design,” the brief read.

The association further argued that despite knowing of the alleged consequences, the EPA declined to adjust percentage standards to

10 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

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reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 82% compared to fossil diesel, qualifying it as

an advanced biofuel.

US sorghum producers association National Sorghum Producers (NSP) had been pushing for more than two years to get sorghum qualified under the RFS. Producers said the decision would motivate more farmers to plant sorghum, which was a less water intensive crop than, for example, corn.

EPA also noted that distillers sorghum oil was currently a niche product with the potential to produce 45.4M-79.5M litres of biofuels annually.

Nine ethanol plants in the US were already extracting oil from sorghum, wrote DTN.

account for the resulting shortfall.

The EPA had granted 48 retroactive small refinery exemptions, which cut 2016 RVOs by 4.3% and 2017 RVOs by 7.5%.

The association also estimated that the 2016 and 2017 exemptions reduced biodiesel demand by more than 300M gallons.

In addition, the NBB challenged the EPA’s use of its cellulosic waiver authority to reduce the 2018 advanced biofuel RVO. Finally, the NBB claimed that the EPA had set the 2019 biomass-based diesel (BBD) volume based on factors that were not mentioned in the RFS statute while disregarding other factors.

“The EPA set the 2019 BBD volume nearly identically to how it set the 2018 volume, which the NBB is challenging in a separate proceeding.”

The EPA was scheduled to file a reply brief by 25 October. www.ofimagazine.com

06/09/2018 11:46

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TRANSPORT NEWS US trade measures cause chaos in shipping markets Mounting trade tensions between China and the USA, combined with the latter’s protectionist policies towards its other trading partners, have plunged global shipping markets into a continuing state of uncertainty, according to a World Grain report on 7 August.

Due to US tariffs imposed on China and Chinese countermeasures, bulk shipping markets were facing uncertainty, and the USA’s negotiations with Canada, the EU and Mexico on steel and aluminium tariffs could throw another spanner in the works.

A change in these trade flows could have far-reaching

IN BRIEF USA: Grains and oil crops trader Consolidated Grain & Barge Co (CGB) has completed a US$32M expansion of its soyabean processing facility at the Port of Indiana-Mount Vernon.

The expansion, which began in 2016, would increase servicing opportunities for Indiana’s soya farmers and increase product supply, reported Building Indiana on 13 August.

The Port of IndianaMount Vernon, situated in the third largest soyabean producing state in the USA, moves various commodities including soyabean meal and oil, ethanol, dried distillers grain, corn, wheat, fertilisers and coal.

CGB originates and markets grains and oilseeds for both the domestic US and international markets.

USA: Perdue AgriBusiness plans to purchase and reopen a former Cargill grain elevator in Indiana by the 2018 harvest.

Perdue would undertake maintenance prior to opening the elevator in Vincennes, which was closed

by Cargill in 2017, reported World Grain on 8 August.

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Transport news.indd 2

implications for bulk markets and grain traders due to impacted vessel availability later in 2018, whether that availability was higher or lower.

In addition to the tariff threats across three continents, it was expected that China – the largest importer of US soyabeans – would turn to Brazil to make up for imports it was set to miss from the USA. In Brazil, however, a truckers’ strike in May over fuel costs had led to nearly every leading export port closing to trucks during the busiest soya export season.

The backlog caused by the strike was projected to take

weeks to clear, with queues at, for example, the Port of Santos reaching over 50 vessels by early June, World Grain said.

Additionally, vessel delays at ports in southern Brazil could increase quickly if soyabean exports delays began to overlap with the start of the corn export season, said David Ross, national manager of cargo port and agency specialist Alphamar Agencia Maritima.

According to Ross, the timing of the truck strike was especially troublesome for soyabean exporters because of the value crash of the Brazilian real compared to the US dollar from March to May, a

time when Brazilian soyabean was even more popular than usual due to poor output from Argentina.

Finally, shipping prices continued to increase in 2018, with rates for various vessel sizes being up by 25-27% in the first month of the year compared to the same period in 2017. The higher freight rates could last through 2018 and beyond.

As a silver lining, Rahul Kapoor, Asia Pacific transport analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said shipping would be the big winner if the ChinaUSA-EU trade tensions thawed and demand risk fell.

Glencore seeks to double grain capacity at Port of Taman

Global commodity trader Glencore is looking to nearly double its grain export capacity at the Russian Port of Taman by purchasing the terminal usage rights of Ukraine’s Kernel Holding.

Glencore and Kernel each held 50% of the 14.5M tonne grain terminal at Taman and had the right to split its capacity evenly, wrote World Grain on 24 July.

The Black Sea region’s (pictured) role in global grain trade – including oilseeds – had grown significantly in recent years and the trade tensions between China and the USA were expected to further boost its significance, said World Grain.

Exports of soyabeans, which were a secondary crop in the Black Sea region after wheat, had increased over the past year, with Russia reporting that it had exported a record 850,000 tonnes of soya to China between July 2017 and May 2015, more than double the amount sold in the same period in 2016/17.

Earlier in July, Ukraine’s State Food and Grain Corp said it had shipped more than 1M tonnes of various grains to China in 2017/18, which was also twice as much as in the year prior.

Glencore was Russia’s second largest grain exporter in 2017/18, according to grain carrier Rusagrotrans.

May truck strike in Brazil still impacting trade Brazilian agricultural producers – including soyabean farmers and traders – are still suffering from the impact of the 11-day trucker strike in May. A 26 July US Department of Agriculture (USDA) GAIN report said the strike, brought on by rising fuel prices and a weak real against the US dollar, was still slowing down Brazilian oilseed trade.

To resolve the strike, estimated to have resulted in losses of US$1.75bn, the Brazilian government estab-

lished a temporary minimum freight rate guarantee. However, the policy was criticised by transportation dependent industries, including agriculture, the USDA noted.

Brazil lacked comprehensive railway or waterway infrastructure and producers were reliant on trucks to move their products to ports, but according to Brazil’s National Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock (CNA), the minimum freight rate policy had made transporting goods significantly

more costly, increasing freight rates by 50-150%.

Agri associations had challenged the measure in court, while the Brazilian congress had made efforts to make the rate policy permanent.

Decisions in both cases, by the Brazil’s Supreme Court in the first and by the country’s Senate in the latter, were expected by late August.

Major traders had reported that they had, for the most part, stopped participating in the market due to prohibitively high transport costs. www.ofimagazine.com

06/09/2018 12:17

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20/03/2018 10:19

OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

13

BIOTECH NEWS IN BRIEF CANADA: Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) is planning to phase out the outdoor use of two neonicotinoid pesticides – Syngenta’s thiamethoxam and Bayer’s clothianidin – which have been linked to the deaths of aquatic insects and honey bees, Reuters reported on 15 August. The chemicals are widely used on soya, canola and corn.

The proposed ban was subject to a 90-day consultation period, with a final decision expected in late 2019, Reuters said.

Health Canada also planned to make a final decision by the end of the year on whether to ban Bayer’s imidacloprid, another neonicotinoid pesticide.

Canada’s move follows the EU’s ban on the outdoor use of clothianidin, thiamethoxam and imidacloprid, announced in April.

Meanwhile, France’s complete ban on these three pesticides – as well as thiacloprid and acetamiprid – came into effect on 1 September.

EU says gene edited crops are GMOs The EU’s highest court has decreed that crops developed through new plant breeding techniques (NPBTs) – also known as gene editing (GE) technologies – should be considered genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and fall under the EU’s GMO directive.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) found that organisms created through NPBTs were subject to the regulations defined in the EU GMO directive, Reuters reported on 25 July.

The ECJ took the view that “organisms obtained by mutagenesis” were GMOs as defined in the GMO Directive, “in so far as the techniques and methods of mutagenesis alter the genetic material of an organism in a way that does not occur naturally”.

The court considered that the risks linked to the use of NPBTs could be similar to those that result from the production and release of GMOs through transgenesis.

It added that the GMO Directive would not apply to organisms developed through “certain mutagenesis techniques” that had been conventionally used and had long safety records.

European biotech players were disappointed by the decision, with the German chemical industry association VCI – representing firms such as BASF, Bayer and Merck KGaA – calling it “backward looking and hostile to progress”.

BASF and Bayer had both dismissed the possibility of developing GE plant varieties in Europe following the ECJ decision, said Reuters on 27 July.

“As we run a global platform, it would mean that, basically, the applications of these instruments would not be used in Europe and Germany,” said BASF chair of board and chief technology officer Martin Brudermueller.

A Bayer spokesman said that the firm had widened its definition of what constituted a “genetically modified” plant after the EU decision in order for its CEO Werner Baumann’s June declaration to not develop GM crops for commercial use in Europe to also apply to GE crops.

Swiss chemicals maker Syngenta, owned by ChemChina, also stated that much of the potential that GE technologies held would be lost for Europe.

Planted area for GM soya stays steady in USA The US planted soyabean area decreased very slightly in 2018, while the share of genetically modified (GM) beans stayed steady, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In 2018, the US soyabean planted area was estimated at 89.6M acres (36.2M ha) – down 1% from 2017 – of which 94% was made up of GM herbicide resistant seed varieties totaling 84.1M acres (34M ha), the USDA said in a 29 June report.

GERMANY: Bayer will appeal a 17 May ruling by the General Court of the EU that upheld the bloc’s ban on the outdoor use of three neonicotinoid pesticides, wrote Brownfield on 27 July.

The total planted sunflower area grew from 1.3M to 1.4M acres (526,000 to 566,500ha), the canola area stayed the same, and the flaxseed area shrunk from 272,000 to 160,000 acres (110,000 to 64,750ha).

The US corn area, like soyabean, was down 1% from last year at 81.8M acres (33.1M ha).

Of the planted corn total, 92% consisted of GM varieties, unchanged from last year, said the USDA.

Monsanto fined US$289M in ex-groundskeeper’s glyphosate cancer trial US biotech firm Monsanto has been ordered to pay US$289M in damages after a jury found the company liable for a terminally ill man’s cancer, allegedly stemming from Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide.

The jury determined that Dewayne Johnson, 46, had contracted cancer from Roundup during his years of work as a groundskeeper and that Monsanto had failed to warn him of the chemical’s possible health hazards, wrote The 14 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Biotech news.indd 2

Guardian on 11 August.

Mr Johnson’s lawyers argued that Monsanto had opposed science and targeted researchers and academics who had spoken publically about glyphosate’s possible health risks.

Johnson’s attorneys presented internal Monsanto email which they said demonstrated how the firm had ignored expert warnings, sought favourable scientific analyses and helped “ghostwrite” research encouraging continued Roundup use, The Guardian reported.

Glyphosate is the world’s most commonly used herbicide, despite the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) finding in 2015 that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic to humans”.

Monsanto vice president Scott Partridge dismissed any link between glyphosate and cancer and claimed that the IARC was corrupt and that the organisation performed no testing or analysis and “simply rendered an opinion”.

A report by Reuters in October 2017 revealed that the IARC had dismissed and edited findings from a draft of its glyphosate review that did not support its final conclusion.

Monsanto, which was acquired by Bayer in June, was facing more than 8,000 lawsuits in the USA, Bayer chief executive Werner Baumann told analysts on 23 August.

Reuters reported on 13 August that Bayer’s shares had plunged by more than 10% following the Monsanto ruling. www.ofimagazine.com

06/09/2018 12:20

RENEWABLE NEWS

Balanced glycerine market in second half of 2018 Both the US and global glycerine markets are teetering with a delicate supply/ demand balance, according to an ICIS report on 18 July In the USA, most domestic producers of both vegetable and tallow-based glycerine were sold out and fully contracted for the third quarter and buyers feared that any supply disruption could spike prices.

“There was a Midwest producer who had a plant issue in the first quarter and that caused some of their buyers to frantically try to source material and was one of the reasons the market tightened up so quickly in first quarter 2018,” a seller told ICIS. Globally, however, spot markets were beginning to reflect easing supply, with

Southeast Asian glycerine supplies growing more comfortable as biodiesel producers increased their output due to higher demand stemming from rising oil prices.

In Europe, upstream biodiesel imports were expected to slow down as uncertainty continued over the EU’s possible new import duties on Argentine biodiesel.

Both biodiesel producers and glycerine refiners in Argentina were expecting the EU to impose new tariffs on biodiesel imports, possibly in September or October.

On 24 May, the European Commission began registering Argentine biodiesel imports for the next nine months in order to be able to retroactively impose tariffs on those imports, should the current subsidy

case find Argentina was unfairly subsidising its biodiesel industry.

Argentina expected to export around 700,000 tonnes of biodiesel to Europe in 2018, but EU tariffs could derail that plan and consequently affect global glycerine supply, said ICIS. The country’s biodiesel and crude glycerine production declined sharply by 20.3% in Q3 2017 as the USA imposed 72% tariffs on Argentine biodiesel in November 2017.

US glycerine suppliers include ADM, Cargill, Emery Oleochemical, Future Fuels, Louis Dreyfus, Owensboro Grain, Peter Cremer North America, Procter & Gamble, Twin Rivers Technology and Vantage Oleochemical.

CEPSA expands LAB production by a quarter Spanish oil and chemicals company Cepsa recently announced that it is expanding production of linear alkylbenzene (LAB) by 25% at its Puente Mayorga chemical plant in San Roque, Cadiz (pictured).

LAB is a surfactant used in the production of biodegradable detergents and soaps.

“The Puente Mayorga plant is where our experience in the surfactant market began, which we have applied to our other installations around the world,” said José Manuel Martínez, Cepsa’s chemical director.

“The increase in production from 200,000 to 250,000 tonnes at this plant will be primarily aimed at high growth African markets.

Our estimations show LAB

demand in these countries growing by 5% annually between now and 2035.”

The €100M expansion process, which covers the installation of Detal technology co-licensed by Cepsa and technology supplier UOP,

began in May and will take about two years to complete.

Cepsa is a leading producer of LAB, and has plants in Spain, Canada and Brazil, with a production capacity that will reach 650,000 tonnes or 15% of world supply.

IN BRIEF WORLD: BASF announced in April that it would only supply palm-based ingredients certified in line with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Mass Balance standard.

The firm has pledged to switch about 330 palmbased products – used in cosmetics, detergents and cleaning products – to the standard during 2018. Most of its palm-based ingredients come from palm kernel oil (PKO) and derivatives.

BASF said it would source only RSPO-certified sustainable PKO by 2020. In 2017, it bought 153,000 tonnes of RSPO-certified PKO and was able to trace almost 80% of its overall oil palm exposure of more than half a million tonnes.

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16 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Renewables.indd 1

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06/09/2018 11:45

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DIARY OF EVENTS 25-27 September 2018

29-30 October 2018

International Agricultural Fair on Processing and Storage of Agricultural products “Fat and Oil Industry” KiyvExpoPlaza, Kiyv, Ukraine www.oil.agroinkom.com.ua

Omega-3 Summit 2018 Brussels, Belgium www.omega3summit.org

26-28 September 2018 Globoil India 2018 Renaissance Hotel, Mumbai, India www.globoilindia.com 3-4 October 2018 Bulk Liquid Storage Conference 2018 Cartagena, Spain www.wplgroup.com/aci/ event/european-bulk-liquidstorage 4-5 October 2018

31 Oct-2 Nov 2018 14th Indonesian Palm Oil Conference (IPOC) and 2019 Price Outlook The Westin Resort Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia www.gapkiconference.org 12-15 November 2018 16th Annual Roundtable Meeting on Sustainable Palm Oil (RT16) Magellan Sutera Resort, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia www.rspo.org

Poultry Protein & Fat Seminar Nashville, USA www.uspoultry.org/ educationprograms/ index.cfm#ppfs 10-11 October 2018

11-12 December 2018

Biofuels International Conference & Expo 2018 Crowne Plaza, Berlin, Germany www.biofuels-news.com/ conference/biofuels/ biofuels_index.php

2nd Marine Fuels & Lubricants Conference 2018 Dubai, United Arab Emirates www.marinefuels.info

11-12 October 2018 2nd ICIS Indian Surfactants Conference Mumbai, India www.icisevents.com/ehome/ indiansurfactants 22-26 October 2018 National Renderers Association 85th Annual Convention Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel Dana Point, USA convention.nationalrenderers .org 26-27 October 2018 PORAM Annual Forum and Dinner Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia www.poram.org.my www.ofimagazine.com

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Reliability through Experience

06/09/2018 12:50

SPECIALITY OILS

Drivers for high oleics High oleic oils offer nutritional and application advantages including less saturated fatty acids, more monounsaturated acids, and a good shelf life. Yet factors such as segregation costs and volatile premiums for farmers limit their production.

Serena Lim

H

igh oleic oils are high in oleic (monounsaturated) acid, with consumer demand for better quality and healthier oils driving the market, along with regulations limiting trans fatty acids and saturated fat intake.

HO oils have improved oxidative stability and also offer traceability – as the crop and oil must be segregated during harvest, storage, transport and crushing – as well as a non-GM alternative in the case of HO sunflower oil.

Typically, high oleic (HO) oils have a fatty acid profile of more than 80% oleic acid in HO sunflower oil, more than 75% oleic acid in HO rapeseed/canola oil, around 70-75% oleic acid in HO soyabean oil and more than 55% oleic acid in HO palm oil, and (see Figure 3, page 20).

HO oils have been on the market for more than 10 years, responding to a growing demand from industry, according to Lionel Lordez of Monsanto, who was speaking at the April Trade Essentials Oils & Fats conference in the UK. “At the beginning, it was to replace hydrogenated oil, then came issues of health, sustainability, functionality and traceability.”

Today, it is the search for technical and nutritional advantages, for a specific fatty acid profile, for locally-sourced oil, and cost and supply management factors 18 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

High oleic NEW.indd 2

High oleic oils offer benefits such as a better nutritional profile and shelf life

which are driving the market, he says.

Food accounts for more than 80% of global HO oil usage and Lordez believes the market will see organic growth of 1.2M tonnes by 2025, doubling the HO market in the EU from the 700,000 tonnes produced in 2015. Globally, production of HO oils stands at some 2M tonnes, with HO sunflower accounting for around two-thirds of the market, canola 30%, rapeseed 3%, soyabean 3% and safflower 1%, according to Lordez.

Production of HO sunflower oil worldwide has ranged from 1.207M tonnes in 2011/12, to a high of 1.560M tonnes in 2015/16 to 1.183M tonnes in 2017/18 (see Figure 1, page 20), Jose Angel Olivero, sales director of Spanish edible and speciality oil refiner Lipidos Santiaga, told the conference.

Europe, Argentina and the Ukraine are the main producers of HO sunflower.

Ukraine, for example, produced 232,000 tonnes and exported 224,000 tonnes of HO sunflower oil in 2016/17, according to APK Inform. However, for 2017/18, exports are forecast to fall to 180,000 tonnes, due to a fall in planted area.

HO rapeseed/canola is grown in the EU, Canada and Australia and totals about 50,000 tonnes/year, Olivero said.

World production of HO canola ranged from 847,000 tonnes in 2014, to a high of 1.075M tonnes in 2016 to 869,000 tonnes last year (see Figure 2, page 20).

World HO soyabean hectarage is around 250,000ha, yielding some 150,000 tonnes of oil, all from GM seeds, said Olivero.

“There is a big question mark over HO

Photo: United Soybean Board

soya oil with production perhaps only in USA because of the GM issue.”

According to the United Soybean Board, HO soyabeans are currently grown in 12 US states throughout the soyabean belt and Dr Stéphanie Marty-Terrade, senior lipid scientist at Nestlé Product Technology Centre, told the Gatwick conference that HO oils accounted for less than 1% of all US soyabean oil production.

Production of HO palm oil, which has a fatty acid profile of 55% oleic acid, 30% palmitic acid and 33% saturated fats, totals around 150,000 tonnes/ year but is growing at an annual rate of 15-20%, Olivero said. HO palm oil is produced in Colombia and Ecuador and often has a lower free fatty acid (FFA) content than conventional palm oil, which can help reduce the formation of 3-monochloropropane-diol (3-MCPD) esters and glycidyl esters (GE) during oil processing, he added.

Limiting factors

Despite the benefits, production of HO oil has stagnated due to several factors.

Olivero said conventional oilseed and oil had more buyers than the HO alternative and there was a yield loss when switching from the conventional to the HO variety.

“Segregation also has a cost, which is not understood by buyers.”

Farmers would like a premium for planting HO seeds but the high volatility in premiums was discouraging.

Cold winters in Russia and Ukraine meant crushing could not take place in u www.ofimagazine.com

06/09/2018 09:50

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OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

19

SPECIALITY OILS

High Oleic Sunflower Oil

ERS FOR

less

d

summer

U palm

u

Speaking at the conference, Dr MartyTerrade of Nestlé said there was now a broad range of commercially available HO oils.

DRIVERS FOR While most MAIN HO oils targeted industrial frying, they had wider applications.

“HO oils have clear technological SUNFLOWER advantages over their commodity counterparts and bring a unique combination of technological advantages.”

They had a favourable nutritional profile with a lower level of saturated fatty acids, a higher level of monounsaturated acids, THE CROP and the presence of oil-soluble vitamins AND OIL E and K. IMAGE They were valuable oils to reduce SFAs and replace partially hydrogented oils (PHOs), the primary dietary source of artificial trans fat in processed foods.

“They have good shelf life and are liquid and therefore easier to handle and transport. They also work as a heat • Healthy oil : less transfer medium.”

Dr Marty-Terrade said key parameters saturated acid guiding food development included sensory factors,• shelf processing Nicelife, field in summer and technical constraints related to • Answer toregulatory EU palm the product, nutritional and requirements andoil a company’s bashing internal quality policies. “The consumer is in the middle of this as the product needs to taste good.”10 Nestlé operated to both internal and external time lines. For example, the US Food and Drug Administration’s final determination that PHOs are not Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) came into force on June 2018. Parallel to this, Nestlé’s policy was to completely 20 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

High oleic NEW.indd 3

1.475

1.500 1.400

1.307

1.332

1.300

1.207

1.183

1.200

1.216

1.126

1.000 900 800

11/12 12/13 13/14 14/15 15/16 HIGH OLEIC CANOLA. WORLD PRODUCTION

16/17

17/18

Figure 1: World production of high oleic sunflower oil

18/19

Source: Lipidos Santiaga

1.100

PRESENTACIÓN LÍPIDOS SANTIGA. VERSIÓN 05/2017

High oleic canola

1.200

1.075 1.000

847

869

776

800

822

600

400 200 SUNFLOWER

2014

2015

2016

Figure 2: World production of high oleic canola

Figure 3: Fatty acid profiles of high oleic and conventional vegetable oils

eliminate PHO from all its foods and beverages by the end of 2016.

The company’s policy on saturated fat was to further reduce saturated fat by 10% in produts that did not meet the criteria set for different food items in Nestlé’s nutritional profiling system.

“This policy is ongoing and highly challenging.”

2017

2018

Source: Lipidos Santiaga

Benefits and applications

1.560

1.600

Source: Cedric Delavent, Euralis

u winter as oil was frozen in tanks, giving producers less selling options as they could not export between December and March/April.

Access to HO seeds could also be an issue as breeders disliked holding a surplus of seeds, he added.

According to a market report by France’s FAT & Associés, large fluctuations in commodity prices and the fact that HO varieities are almost exclusively grown on contract also mean that supply of HO oils is unpredictable and supply/demand is frequently unbalanced.

“This poses critical dilemnas for countries which consume much more than they produce.

“For example, Europe and North America are top consumers and also the main HO oil producers but domestic production cannot meet local demand and some imports are still needed to plug the gap,” the report said.

Board

OP L

HIGH OLEIC SUNFLOWER OIL. WORLD PRODUCTION

PRESENTACIÓN LÍPIDOS SANTIGA. VERSIÓN 05/2017

Nestlé had used HO soyabean oil to reformulate its liquid coffee creamers and, by the end of 2015, it had achieved a 45% reduction in the product’s SFA content and replaced PHO, leading to the removal of trans fatty acids, without compromising the taste.

Dr Marty-Terrade said Nestlé had also used HO sunflower oil to reformulate its instant soup recipe.

“HO sunflower oil is often used in nutritional applications because its fatty acid profile is neutral. There is a minor impact on linoleic content and no impact on alpha-linolenic acid content.

“It does not compromise the oxidative stability of products and it maintains the non-GMO status of products.”

In the case of instant soup, Dr MartyTerrade said the company had reduced the SFA content from 1.7g/250ml to 0.8g/250ml.

The goal was to maintain oxidative stability in the fat phase, provide creaminess and maintain compatibility with current manufacturing processes.

The solution was a HO sunflower oil encapsulated into a carbyohydrate/milk protein matrix. ●

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06/09/2018 09:50

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21

RENDERING

T

he European rendering industry processes around 17M tonnes/year of animal material from the meat and livestock industry into safe and usable materials for a wide range of applications, including pet food, biodiesel and fish and animal feed. From this 17M tonnes, some 3M tonnes of animal fats and nearly 4.5M tonnes of animal proteins are produced.

Roughly 34% of pigs, 42% of cattle and 25% of chickens which are slaughtered are not used for human consumption.

These animal by-products (ABPs) from slaughterhouses, along with around 2.45M tonnes of fallen stock that have died on farms in the EU, are processed by the rendering industry.

ABPs fall into three categories in Europe; depending on their level of risk.

Category 1 (high risk): ▪ Specified Risk Material (SRM) linked with the transmission of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) including bovine spinal chord and brain.

▪ Fallen stock with SRM. ▪ International catering waste.

▪ Anything handled with Category 1.

Category 2: ▪ Material not fit for human consumption and posing a risk to animals and humans.

▪ Fallen stock without SRM. Category 3: ▪ Material fit for human consumption at the point of slaughter.

▪ Former foodstuffs and catering waste.

▪ Animal products without a specified risk such as egg shells, feathers, bristles and horns.

The processing of all these materials is carried out on segregated lines to prevent contamination between different categories of waste and between different species.

Fat and protein products

The rendering process produces two main products – fat and protein. How the fat and protein is further used depends on their risk category (see Figure 1, pg23).

Category 1 materials are burnt as fuel, with some 1M tonnes of MBM burnt in power stations and cement kilns each year. Rendered fat is also processed into biodiesel.

Category 2 materials can also be burnt as fuel, used for biodiesel or in fertilisers. MBMs are rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, a non-renewable element from phosphate rock, which is a key ingredient for plant growth and 22 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Rendering CENTRE.indd 2

Animal by-products from meat production are rendered into fat and protein and can be used in some fish and animal

Circle of life The European rendering industry processes some 17M tonnes of animal material from meat production into fat and protein products that can be used in a range of applications, including edible fats, oleochemicals, pet food, biodiesel, fish and animal feed. Serena Lim photosynthesis Category 3 low risk materials have the widest range of uses. Edible animal fats are taken from the carcasses of animals in slaughterhouses, but kept separate from other lower quality Category 3 material.

They are produced from animals fit for human consumption. Premium grade fat is cut from the abdominal cavity and under the skin. It is then purified, filtered and refined to produce high grade oils and fats. They are used in baked goods, such as croissants and pastries, and as a frying agent.

Some 186,000 tonnes/year of edible fats – such as lard, suet and dripping – are produced from rendering in Europe.

A further 950,000 tonnes of Catergory 3 rendered fat is used each year by the animal feed and pet food industries.

Rendered fat is also a raw material for oleochemicals, which are used as

ingredients for a range of household goods such as cosmetics, lubricants and cleaning products. Around 575,000 tonnes of rendered fat produced in the EU is used by the oleochemicals industry each year. Rendered fats are the only domestic source of hard fats in the EU. Protein from Category 1 and 2 is referred to as meat and bone meal (MBM) and protein from Category 3 as processed animal protein (PAP).

PAP is a key component of dry pet foods and a substitute for vegetable proteins such as soyabeans. PAP is used to produce pet food, with 1.67M tonnes of PAP going into the pet food industry every year.

PAP is also an ingredient in aquafeed – particularly for commercially grown carnivorous fish such as salmon. About 220,000 tonnes of PAP is used for feed on fish farms. In Europe, using PAP in www.ofimagazine.com

06/09/2018 09:58

Source: EFPRA

RENDERING

Use of category 2 products Figure11:and EU category 1, 2 and 3 uses

e fish and animal feed

According to Dirk Dobbelaere, secretary general of the European Fat Processors and Renderers Association Biodiesel (EFPRA), Figure 2: Uses of category 1 and 2 products EFPRA Congress, Barcelona, 22.6.2018/ Dirk Dobbelaere production of pigs, poultry and beef are all expected to increase in the coming year in the EU. Speaking at the EFPRA Congress in June, Dobbelaere said pig production was expected to increase by 1.2% in 2018 compared with 2017. A slight 0.13% increase in beef production in 2018 is expected, but a fall of 0.47% in 2019 is forecast.

Total EU poultry production (which includes turkeys and ducks) is expected to rise by 1.2% between 2017 and 2018, with the wave of 2016-2017 avian influenza outbreaks affecting a record number of EU poultry holdings now finally coming to an end.

Dobbelaere said that animal byproducts processing had increased, with the production of 21% more Category 3 and FigureDirk 3: Dobbelaere EU biodiesel production from category 1, 2 and 3 materials food grade products in 2017EFPRA compared u 22.6.2018/ Congress, Barcelona, www.ofimagazine.com

Rendering CENTRE.indd 3

Folie 15/27 • June 2018

Source: EFPRA

EU meat sector

Source: EFPRA

aquaculture was restricted until 2013.

Since then, non-ruminant (pig and poultry) PAP has been permitted, reflecting scientific consensus on the safety of feeding land animal proteins to fish.

PAP can also form part of the feed rations of omnivorous and carnivorous animals. In the EU, no same species PAP consumption is allowed. However, the EU does export mixed species PAP to countries outside Europe.

Folie 16/27 • June 2018

OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 23

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RENDERING

ination of edible and category 3 fat the EU fertiliser regulation will impact any animal by-product material currently used as a fertiliser or soil improver.

A revised regulation may be adopted next year, with a three-year implementation period. However, revision proposals currently do not specify any animal byproducts which can be used for fertiliser.

Production of food grade and category 3 fat

Production: 2.44M tonnes

stination of edible and category 3 fat

Relaxation of PAP rules: The EU rendering industry is awaiting a decision on whether pig PAP can be used in poultry feed, and poultry PAP in pig feed.

The BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) outbreak in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to the culling of millions of cows to prevent its spread and the deaths of around 150 people who Figure 4: Production and destination of food grade & category 3 fat caught the human variant, Crezfeldt-Jakob Folie 18/27 • Junedisease 2018 Congress, Barcelona,u 22.6.2018/ Dobbelaere (vCJD). BSE and vCJD belong to fur animal feed, food and incineration. withDirk 2016, and stable Category 1 and a group of diseases called transmissible Pet food is, by far, the largest user of PAP, 2 production. A rise of 13% more dead spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). using 2.05M tonnes in 2017. Fertiliser is stock corresponded with 13% less The source of BSE was cattle feed another big end user, totalling 650,000 condemned material in Categories 1and 2. prepared from BSE infected animal tonnes.

There had been a 15% increase in PAP Folie 18/27 • June 2018 RA Congress, Barcelona, 22.6.2018/ Dirk Dobbelaere tissues, such as brain and spinal cord, production and a 14% rise in Category and a ban on PAP in cattle feed was 3 edible fat production, and the stable Challenges ahead introduced in July 1994. use of animal fats from all categories Sustainability: The rendering industry But with BSE now virtually eradicated in in biodiesel since 2015. Food and feed will be under pressure from its customers the EU, the restrictions on animal proteins grade proteins had seen a 15% rise in to prove its sustainability, according to in feed are slowly being relaxed. production, with a 5% fall in fertiliser use Sebastian Csaki, senior advisor at the Non-ruminant (pig and poultry) meal but a 7% increase in pet food use. Exports International Feed Industry Federation has been allowed in fish feed since 2013. of terrestrial animal feed was a new and a management board member of the And last October, the EU Commission market, already exceeding fish feed.

Global Feed LCA Institute (GFLI). asked the European Food Safety Authority EU production of Category 1 and Speaking at the EFPRA conference, (EFSA) to give a scientific opinion on the Category 2 material was 4.6M tonnes and Csaki said that the livestock, feed and BSE risk of feeding pig PAP to poultry, and 0.83M tonnes, respectively, in 2017. rendering sectors needed to be able poultry PAP to pigs.

The majority of Category 1 material communicate reliable figures on their It is unclear when the EU may allow was combusted, followed by biodiesel environmental impact. this relaxation and any decision would be production (see Figure 2, pg23). The main “The global population is forecast subject to approval of analytical tests that uses of Category 2 material was for to reach 9bn people by 2050, putting have been developed to identify the DNA fertiliser and biodiesel. enormous pressure on resources. With of individual species in PAP. Biodiesel use of Category 1 and 2 meat consumption going up as the world In its request to the EFSA, the materials totalled more than 500,000 population and middle class grows, Commission noted the validation in 2012 tonnes in 2017, along with an almost demand for protein will rise.” of a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) equal amount of Category 3 material (see Governments and consumers would method targeting ruminant DNA. It added Figure 3, pg23). be pressuring feed producers on their that PCR methods targeting pig DNA and Production of food grade and category sustainability credentials. poultry DNA had now been validated by 3 fat amounted to 2.44M tonnes in 2017, The GFLI aims to harmonise the EU Reference Laboratory for Animal more than half of which was multi species environmental footprinting methodology Protein. animal fats (see Figure 4, above). Other to produce a globally recognised life cycle Many commentators argue that using products produced included poultry fat, analysis (LCA) database that would allow PAP as a livestock feed prevents high pig fat, lard, tallow, bone fat and pig skin the accurate measurement of the feed value protein going to waste – improving fat. The main uses of these fats was for and livestock industry’s environmental the overall sustainability of the food chain, oleochemimcals, terrestrial animal feed impact. writes Feednavigator.com. However, there and biodiesel.

Csaki urged the rendering industry to may be public resistance to the idea.

PAP and food grade protein production calculate their LCA impact and feed the “Public perception is a big hurdle totalled 3.1M tonnes in 2017, the information into its database. “Now is the to overcome and the sustainability majority being multi-species PAP, followed time to shape your own world as we want benefits of animal proteins over plantby poultry meal PAP, pig meal PAP, feather to make sure we capture your impact based protein sources, which can meal, blood meal PAP, greaves meal, blood correctly,” he said. cause deforestation, really needs to products and pig hair meal. be highlighted,” said Adrian Kesterson, Last year, 2.7M tonnes of PAP and New EU fertiliser regulation: Some 20% technical advisor to renderers body food grade protein went into pet food, of EU rendered products are sold to the FABRA UK, in Poultry News. l fertilisers, terrestrial animal feed, fish feed, fertiliser industry and a major revision to Folie 17/27 • June 2018

Source: EFPRA

EFPRA Congress, Barcelona, 22.6.2018/ Dirk Dobbelaere

24 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Rendering CENTRE.indd 4

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06/09/2018 09:58

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PROCESSING & TECHNOLOGY

From speciality to commodity W

ith increasing consumption of cocoa butter (CB)-based confectionery foods worldwide, demand for CB is far exceeding its availability, with high prices as a direct result.

In order to overcome the shortage and, at the same time, improve the physical properties of some CB sources, the confectionery industry is continuously looking for alternatives to either replace CB in their recipes or improve its melting properties. These alternatives are better known as speciality or confectionery fats.

Specialty fats belong to a unique category because they are substitutes for other types of high value-added exotic fats like CB, typically used in an extensive range of chocolate, confectionery, bakery and ice cream products.

Confectionery fats are designed to resemble the functional properties of CB and there are three types of CB alternatives – the cocoa butter equivalents (CBE), the cocoa butter substitutes (CBS) and the cocoa butter replacers (CBR).

Real chocolate is made using only CB or CB blended with a maximum of 5% CBE. Apart from a reduction in fat costs, the main advantage of adding CBE is to improve the physical properties of the fat fraction in the chocolate.

CBE can be customised by a proper selection of its constitutive ingredients, such as palm mid fraction, shea butter

26

OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Desmet_digital.indd 2

Increasing demand for cocoa butter-based confectionery has sent producers on a quest for alternatives to avoid the high cost of the original product or to improve melting properties.

New crystallisation and separation technologies are being used to produce these speciality fats.

Desmet Ballestra Group stearin, illipe, sal, kokun and mango kernel fats.

When the melting profile – usually expressed as a solid fat content (SFC) profile – of the CBE is well above the CB SFC profile, it becomes a cocoa butter improver (CBI).

Since CBE is fully compatible with CB (due to its high concentration of POP, POS and SOS triglycerides), the amount of CBE that can be incorporated into a CBEbased chocolate is a flexible parameter, allowing producers to make chocolate products with a minimum amount of CB. CBS-based chocolates are the most widely consumed products of the three.

A CBS-based chocolate does not require tempering. The main sources of CBS are palm kernel and coconut stearin.

Due to shorter chain triglycerides (lauric and myristic types), the compatibility of CBS with CB is very low, typically 5%.

Commercially available CBSs are usually post-hydrogenated, fully or partially depending on the application.

The latter is progressively being

abandoned in favour of the trans-free version.

CBR-based chocolates were, for a long time, considered the best economical alternative to real CB-based chocolate.

The main sources for CBR are palm, soyabean and rapeseed oils. CBRs are non-tempering fats and they have a partial compatibility with CB with a typical tolerance of 20% of CB. The specific functionality of CBR is due to the presence of trans fatty acids (35-45%), which today are under fire from health conscious consumers and experts.

To overcome this, CBRs with lower trans fat content (5-8%) are now being developed.

From a processing point of view, all vegetable fats used in these applications are mostly fractionated (ideally with dry, optionally with solvent processes), possibly hardened (preferably with full hydrogenation), or even interesterified (chemically or enzymatically, randomly or selectively) to match the product specifications. www.ofimagazine.com

07/09/2018 09:04

PROCESSING & TECHNOLOGY When applied to speciality fats, the term ‘fractionation’ refers to a selective fractional crystallisation of triglycerides, followed by the separation of the solid from the remaining liquid fraction.

The fractional crystallisation is carried out by controlled cooling of a melted fat (dry fractionation) or after it has been diluted in an organic solvent (solvent fractionation).

Dry fractionation is a sustainable and well proven process as it does not

based on interconnected Mobulizers.

The technology was developed in response to demand for enhancing overall performance with higher olein yields and higher fractions quality, at lower utility consumption.

Desmet’s Statolizer is another technology dedicated to static dry crystallisation (see Figure 1, below). The fully automated system was developed in response to issues with traditional panning and pressing and solvent fractionation technologies. u

use chemicals, produces no effluent and experiences no oil losses. Different crystalliser types with appropriate and specific designs are commercially available on the market, as well as different separation processes, with the membrane filter press and the vacuum belt filters most widely used in dry and solvent fractionation, respectively.

Dry fractionation can be implemented in continuous mode with the iConFrac process – developed by Desmet Ballestra – the operation of which is

Source: Desmet Ballestra

Fractionation technology

Figure 1: Operation schematic of the Statolizer process in dry fractionation Cocoa Butter Equivalents

HPMF Solvent

SBS Solvent

33.4

32.8

31.0

% (HPLC)

IV

PKO Single-stage Statolizer

PKO Double-stage Statolizer

PKS

HPKS (CBS1)

PKS (CBS2)

PKS

<1

4.8

7.4

7.0

u

CO Single-stage Statolizer

u

HPKS (CBS3)

CS IV ~5

CS IC ~3

<1

4.6

2.5

% (GC)

DAG

2.4

1.0

1.2

C8:0

<1.5

<1.5

<1.5

<2.5

<2.5

4.5

2.8

POP

67.4

68.6

0.8

C10:0

2.2

2.6

2.2

2.8

3.1

4.7

4.2

POS

12.0

15.1

12.1

C12:0

54.5

53.4

54.9

56.3

55.9

48.3

47.9

SOS

1.2

1.9

76.1

C14:0

23.2

22.2

25.6

19.6

19.3

25.2

28.8

C16:0

9.8

9.3

10.1

8.9

8.8

9.9

11.0

C18:0

2.2

10.5

2.0

2.0

10.9

2.6

2.8

C18:1

6.9

-

4.7

7.5

-

3.6

2.1

SFC (%@°C)

Parallel IUPAC 2 150 b (tempered)

SFC (%@°C)

Serial IUPAC 2 150 a (non-tempered)

10

91

94

94

10

92

99

97

92

99

91

96

20

85

88

93

20

87

98

95

83

96

72

90

25

73

79

93

25

75

92

85

63

84

40

71

30

42

47

92

30

34

50

56

16

42

1

17

35

1

0

86

35

0

5

1

0

5

0

1

40

0

-

9

40

-

0

0

-

0

-

0

Source: Desmet Ballestra

IV

HPMF Statolizer

Cocoa Butter Substitutes

Table 1: Parameters of some hard palm mid fractions (HPMF), shea butter stearin (SBS), palm kernel stearins (PKS), hydrogenated palm kernel stearins (HPKS), and coconut stearins (CS) obtained from dry (Statolizer) or solvent (acetone) fractionation www.ofimagazine.com

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27

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PROCESSING & TECHNOLOGY

Figure 3: Single- and double-stage dry (Statolizer) fractionation process of palm kernel oil

u

The Statolizer can handle highly viscous crystal slurries and it is applied to CBE (hard palm mid fraction or HPMF) and CBS (palm kernel and coconut stearin).

Membrane press filters, working up to 30 bars of squeezing pressure, are the most powerful tools for separating olein and stearin fractions in dry fractionation.

Solvent fractionation is less popular due to its higher production cost and capital investment, possible safety hazards and environmental issues. However, certain high-grade products can only be made 28 OFI â&#x20AC;&#x201C; SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Desmet_digital.indd 4

using solvent fractionation.

Traditionally, the fat to be processed is diluted in a solvent, usually acetone, at a specific ratio, typically 3:1 to 4:1 (solvent/ oil). Adding a solvent dramatically lowers the viscosity of the crystallising mass and results in a much quicker crystallisation.

In solvent fractionation, there is no real standard plant and each is designed for its specific purpose. The most important aspect of the process is the washing stage during filtration, which allows entrained olein in the stearin cake to be washed out

Source: Desmet Ballestra

Figure 2: Multi-stage dry fractionation process of palm oil

Source: Desmet Ballestra

into the olein filtrate stream. Countercurrent horizontal vacuum belt filters enable the filter cake to be washed with fresh and cold solvent after main filtration.

Rather than sending these streams to solvent recovery, recycling them to the front of the process allows for a second chance to recover final traces of olein and reduces solvent consumption. These filters are totally enclosed so that they can operate in a fully explosion proof environment.

Practical approach

Cocoa butter The most abundant triglycerides in CB are POP, POS and SOS. Globally, there is a wide variety of CBs, which are considered soft or hard depending also on the quantity of tri-saturated triglycerides (StStSt) present. Fractionation of CB can be done dry or in solvent.

When fractionation is conducted in dry conditions and under shear, the crystal slurry viscosity rapidly increases, which necessitates early filtration. The triglyceride composition of stearin and olein fractions and the operation yield (10-20%) obtained this way are far from those obtained from solvent fractionation.

However, with the Statolizer technology, static crystallisation can be carried out beyond the viscosity limits, allowing a time-dependent and more powerful demixing of the three monounsaturated triglycerides, as evidenced by the solid fat content profile of the corresponding stearin and the operation yield (>50%), which are getting close to solvent fractionation.

Cocoa butter equivalents HPMF and shea butter stearin (SBS) are often used as ingredients for CBE, with shea butter increasing the SOS content, while palm oil is the source of POP. HPMF is produced through multi-stage fractionation of refined palm oil (see Figure 2, pg28). Palm oil fractionation makes it possible to cover a wide range of food products, from hard fats to confectionery fats and cooking oils.The first two steps are easily completed by dry fractionation under shear and the iConFrac continuous process can be used for them.

However, when it comes to concentrating the POP in the HPMF, a certain viscosity develops that forces producers to turn to alternative technologies, like the Statolizer, or solvent fractionation for the last step. Acetone is generally preferred due to lower energy consumption and better selectivity.

Indeed, symmetrical triglycerides tend to experience higher crystallisation in www.ofimagazine.com

07/09/2018 09:04

PROCESSING & TECHNOLOGY acetone compared to non-symmetrical ones. Furthermore, diglycerides – being more soluble in acetone – will concentrate in the mid olein, allowing for better reduction in HPMF. Today, high grade HPMF can be obtained from palm oil using the Statolizer technology in the last fractionation step (see Table 1, pg27, and Figure 4, pg30).

Compositional and thermal properties tend to largely approach what the acetone process can do.

However, the dry route remains a less attractive option for performance yield. Further developments are aimed at specifically improving the yield as the dry fractionation route is by far the most sustainable one. For some feedstocks, like shea butter and the highest quality speciality palm oil-based end products, dry fractionation is difficult and the solvent technology is, to date, still the preferred route (see Table 1, pg27).

Due to high latent heat release from the crystallisation of SOS (the major triglyceride of shea butter), dry crystallisation is often not manageable, no matter what the crystalliser’s design.

Using the acetone process for shea butter fractionation has three advantages: ▪ Better crystallisation heat dissipation under diluted conditions ▪ Adjustment of the diglyceride level in the stearin ▪ Possible upstream removal of the karitene by precipitation in the solvent.

Shea butter is characterised by its 4-5% level of karitene (poly-isoprenic hydrocarbon fraction), which cannot be easily removed by conventional refining processes. Having a negative impact on the crystallisation properties of SBS, the karitene content has to be reduced for edible product applications.

or fully refined states. For PKO (see Figure 3, pg28), the Statolizer allows consistent production of palm kernel stearin IV~7 in a single-stage process. This palm kernel stearin can be used as a CBS after full hydrogenation (CBS 1, IV < 1) (see Table 1, pg27, and Figure 5, pg30).

A double-stage process route allows for the production of unhardened yet high quality CBS 2 (IV <5). This unhardened palm kernel stearin has outstanding melting and crystallisation properties when compared to the traditional (singlestage), fully hydrogenated stearin fraction.

The absence of post-hydrogenation is

considered a plus for those who aim to produce clean and green CBS. An increase in total stearin yield can be achieved through successive fractionation of the corresponding palm kernel olein into a second palm kernel stearin IV ~7 and a higher IV palm kernel olein.

After post-hardening (IV < 1), this second palm kernel stearin has the characteristics of a good CBS (CBS 3), although it is a little softer. The reduced hydrogenation capacity is another important benefit of the double-stage static fractionation process of PKO. For CO, it is possible to obtain, in one u

The solid fat content profile of HPMF is completely different from that of SBS, the latter being much harder and having a melting point between 35 and 40°C. Adequate selection of the relative proportions of the two components and possible addition of other tropical fats makes it possible to modulate the melting properties of CBE according to final product specifications.

Cocoa butter substitutes CBS, mainly derived from palm kernel oil (PKO) or coconut oil (CO), is particularly high in lauric and myristic fatty acids.

However, CO has a lower iodine value (IV) due to a lower oleic content, compensated for by more caproic and myristic fatty acids. Both PKO and CO can be fractionated in their crude, semi www.ofimagazine.com

Desmet_digital.indd 5

OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 29

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PROCESSING & TECHNOLOGY u single-stage process with the Statolizer technology, stearins with an IV varying between 2 and 5 (see Table 1, pg27). This IV is lower than that of a typical palm kernel stearin, which is around 7.

However, the corresponding solid fat content profiles are softer, essentially at 30°C and this cannot really be improved after full post-hydrogenation.

For this reason, CO is a less suitable feedstock for use in normal substitute chocolate coatings. Other applications are biscuit filling creams or chocolate centres, where the rapid melt gives a pleasing cooling sensation in the mouth.

Cocoa butter replacers Good CBR can be obtained through dry fractionation of partially hydrogenated soft oils. This can easily be done using the iConFrac process.

When starting with, for example,

partially hydrogenated soyabean oil (IV around 77), the olein can be re-fractioned, producing a stearin (CBR), which has a steep melting profile and a high trans isomers content of more than 40%.

However, the negative image of trans fatty acids in food products and regulations put in place to mitigate them have made these types of products less and less desirable.

Conclusions

CB alternatives are mostly manufactured from fractionated tropical fats, selected based on their final applications. Some are blended in variable proportions, used as they are or post-hydrogenated. The current tendency is to avoid trans isomers in food formulations and favouring low or zero trans products.

Fractionation technology has progressed, particularly in the last decades, so that the majority of these

products can today be obtained using the dry process route.

Another recently developed approach is lipase-catalysed CBE production, resulting in structured lipids with a high amount of symmetrical SOS triglycerides.

This process, however, remains quite costly, considering the enzyme price and the post-treatments (distillation, fractionation) necessary for purification and quality improvement.

Through innovation and creativity, confectionery fats have evolved from a speciality to a commodity. New directions in both crystallisation as well as separation are being explored and it is only a matter of time when the results reach the level of industrial reliability and efficiency. ● This article is written by Dr Véronique Gibon, science manager, and by Dr Ir Marc Kellens, global technical director, at Desmet Ballestra Group

100 90 80 70

SFC (%)

60 50 40 30

10 0 20

25

30

35

40

Temperature (°C) SBS-1 - solvent (acetone)

SBS-2 - solvent (acetone)

HPMF1- solvent (acetone)

HPMF2-solvent (acetone)

HPMF1-dry (Statolizer)

HPMF2-dry (Statolizer)

Figure 4: Solid fat content profiles (IUPAC 2150 b - parallel method - 40 hours at 26°C) of some hard palm mid fractions (HPMF) and shea butter stearins (SBS) from the solvent (acetone) and the dry (Statolizer) fractionation processes

Source: Desmet Ballestra

20

100 90 80 70

SFC (%)

60 50 40 30

10 0 10

15

20

25

30

35

Temperature (°C) PKS IV 7.0

HPKS IV < 1 (CBS1)

PKS IV 4.8 (CBS2)

PKS IV 7.4

HPKS IV < 1 (CBS3)

Figure 5: Solid fat content profiles (IUPAC 2150 a - serial method - non-tempered) of some palm kernel stearins (PKS) and CBS obtained from the single- and double-stage dry (Statolizer) fractionation process 30 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Desmet_digital.indd 6

Source: Desmet Ballestra

20

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Plant and equipment round-up IN BRIEF USA: Biofuel company Renewable Energy Group (REG) has completed a US$32M expansion of its Ralston, Iowa, biorefinery, expanding biodiesel production capacity from 12 to 30M gallons/year, wrote Biofuels Digest on 10 May. The expansion would improve the facility’s logistics and storage capabilities, the firm said.

REG broke ground on the expansion in 2016 with an initial budget of US$24M. USA: Texas-based biodiesel technology developer Benefuel is planning to construct a new 70M litres/ year biodiesel facility in Canada using the firm’s proprietary Ensel technology.

Rob Tripp, Benefuel CEO, said the firm was working to complete the engineering phase in “coming months” and to break ground in Sarnia, Ontario, by the end of 2018, wrote Biodiesel Magazine on 4 April.

The Ensel technology has been used over the past two years at the 190M litres/year biodiesel plant in Nebraska, operated by Duonix Beatrice, a joint venture between Benefuel and Flint Hill Resources.

Oils & Fats International reports on some of the latest projects, technology and process news and developments around the world

Technology to recycle palm oil mill waste A research team from Nottingham University’s Malaysia branch has developed two new process technologies to produce building materials and bioenergy from palm oil process waste.

As the world’s second largest palm oil producer after Indonesia, Malaysia produced a massive amount of waste from its palm oil industry annually, including kernels and husks from pressed fruits, discarded branches, and wastewater mixed with organic matter known as palm oil mill effluent (POME), The Engineer reported on 18 May. To address the waste problem, the researchers developed a zero waste management system for palm oil mills, called the Integrated Waste Recovery and Regeneration System (REGEN).

The system converted all solid biomass waste and POME from palm oil processing into

building material and bioenergy, said professor Denny K S Ng from the Faculty of Engineering at Nottingham University Malaysia.

“Once it is commercialised, our technology will enable palm oil processing facilities to turn oil palm fronds, trunks and empty fruit bunches into dried long fibre for matting, pallets, briquettes and biofuels,” he said.

“We can also use the palm debris to make a biofertiliser that retains the nutrients from the palm tree, cutting chemical use and creating healthier soil.

This, in turn, improves the palm fruit yield and the quality of the crude oil.”

In addition to REGEN, the team also developed what they called the Integrated Anaero-

bic-Aerobic Bioreactor (IAAB) to recycle POME (pictured), which as a raw effluent posed significant environmental risks and required extensive treatment before it could be released into the water cycle.

The IAAB process turned POME into water that could be reused in the palm oil milling process and that could be further purified into potable water, alongside digesting the organic matter in POME to create methane that could be processed into biofuel.

Mei Fong Chong from Nottingham University Malaysia’s Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering said the Malaysian palm oil milling industry produced approximately 30M tonnes/year of wastewater.

US$5M to develop self-driving vehicles for soyabean and canola farming Leading private seed firm Stine Seed, USA, has granted US$5M in funding to autonomous agri software firm Smart Ag to develop driverless vehicles for agriculture.

Stine Seed, which holds 900 patents related to soyabean and corn genetics and which works with Monsanto and Syngenta, made the investment in Smart Ag to boost productivity and innovation within the farming sector, wrote FutureCar on 21 June.

Smart Ag’s solutions for row crop agriculture – which includes soyabeans, canola and cotton among others – catered to large 32 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

PE Roundup.indd 2

scale production relying on heavy machinery, which could benefit from self-driving technology due to the sector’s methodical planting techniques and linear field layouts.

The firm said it aimed to streamline the adoption of driverless vehicles on farms with products such as its AutoCart solution, which could be used to equip tractors with self-driving technology.

Such systems could be used with graincart tractors during harvests, which would allow farmers to upscale operations with less labour and without having to be in the same location to initiate commands. u www.ofimagazine.com

9/10/2018 9:42:42 AM

u

PLANT & TECHNOLOGY u

Prairie AquaTech breaks ground on US$60M soya processing plant

Drones evaluate canola damage Work by the Faculty of Science of the University of Alberta in Canada could produce more accurate estimates of weather-related crop damage through the use of drone technology.

Post-doctoral fellow Virginia Garcia Millan was researching whether algorithms and drones already used in applications like hydrology and forestry could also be used to estimate crop damage, wrote Folio on 27 April.

Garcia Millan, who was working with Calgary-based aerial mapping firm Skymatics, said the results so far were encouraging and that agri and insurance sectors were saying that they were finding the gathered data useful.

Garcia Millan’s damage-calculating algorithms used data collected by aerial drones from more than 8,000ha of canola and other crops in Alberta, alongside data from nearly 40,500ha globally.

The algorithms generated an ultra-high-resolution digital map of the field, a 3D model of the crop surface and a table with damage estimates in hectares, percentages of loss and monetary values, with all of the data delivered to users’ mobile devices by Skymatics.

Crop damages were traditionally estimated by adjusters visually from the edges of a field or by walking through

IN BRIEF DENMARK: Danish engineering company Haarslev, which designs and manufacturers systems and equipment for processing animal by-products into animal feed, reports that it has received the two largest orders in its history.

Totalling €47M (US$55M), the company received a €21.5M (US$25.1M) order in January, which was quickly surpassed by another at €25.7M (US$30M), the firm said on 1 June.

Haarslev experienced a high level of activity in Europe and the USA in 2017 and has a goal to boost its revenues by 50% by 2020, although its financial report showed a decline in revenue due to changes in accounting principles.

AALI to build new palm oil plant to boost capacity Indonesian palm oil producer Astra Agro Lestari (AALI) is planning to build a new palm oil production facility in southern Kalimantan to boost production capacity.

The new 250bn rupiah (US$17.3M) palm oil mill would be able to produce up to 45 tonnes/hour of palm oil, with the goal of starting to process new crops by 2019, said Industry.co.id on 27 April.

The plant would also in-

crease the supply of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) from plasma plantations and other independent plantations.

AALI has 45 palm oil facilities around Indonesia, consisting of 31 crude palm oil plants with capacities of 1,500 tonnes/hour and 14 palm kernel oil mills with capacities of 1,625 tonnes/day.

Additionally, AALI owns 291.9ha of oil palm plantations.

GEA to deliver the largest butter making machine in India German engineering company GEA has sold its first type BUE butter making machine to Indian dairy producer Creamy Foods Ltd, making it the owner of the largest such machine in India.

The GEA BUE 6000 machine, with an hourly production capacity of up to six tonnes of butter, would be delivered to Uttar Pradesh-based Creamy Foods and brought into operation in February 2019, GEA said in a 12 July statement.

The BUE machine allowed for continuous

34 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

PE Roundup.indd 3

the field in an M-shaped pattern, which could lead to disagreements between adjusters and farmers on how much of the crop was actually lost, said Garcia Millan.

Drone data gave a wider-ranging perspective to show the true extent of yield losses over much larger areas of farmland and reduced the workload on insurance company adjusters, especially in the aftermath of major weather events that could mean delays in damage viewings and result in less accurate estimates, she explained.

The next step of the project was to integrate Garcia Millan’s crop loss algorithms into the Skyclaim web app in beta form for the 2018 growing season.

US fish feed producer, Prairie AquaTech, is scaling up its operations from pilot level by building a new US$60M soyabean processing facility.

To be located in Volga, South Dakota, the facility would initially process around 45,000 tonnes of soyabean meal – purchased from South Dakota Soybean Processors (SDSP) – to turn into a fish feed ingredient, the company said in a statement.

Having broken ground at the site on 1 May, Prairie estimates that the new plant will produce around 27,000 tonnes/year of soyabean-based protein that would go into fish feed pellets, together with oils, minerals and vitamins.

Prairie CEO and managing director Mark Luecke said the company would scale up its current 9,000 litre tanks, in which it fermented soyabean meal, to 181,800 litre ones.

Luecke added that the Volga plant would drive up demand for soyabean meal from SDSP. The firm operates a plant producing non-GMO soyabean meal in Miller, which currently had a production capacity of roughly 635,000 tonnes/year of meal.

production of butter from sweet or sour cream through the Fritz process, said GEA. In addition to the BUE 6000, the deal included two different separators and a clarifier for removing solid components from clarified butter.

With the new equipment, Creamy Foods – which was the largest global producer of ghee, India’s primary cooking fat – could process up to 190 tonnes/day of cream, turning it into 76 tonnes of ghee. www.ofimagazine.com

9/10/2018 9:42:45 AM

PLANT & TECHNOLOGY Bridgeport declares bankruptcy Connecticut, USA firm Bridgeport Biodiesel has filed for bankruptcy following continuous profitability and processing issues at its 13M gallons/year biodiesel production facility, according to Biodiesel Magazine on 12 April.

Bridgeport Biodiesel CEO Brent Baker said the company’s financial problems had stemmed from the process technology installed at the plant, which had been “plagued by mechanical and flow issues” and unable to successfully operate the solid catalyst esterification system.

The esterification technology was developed by Tennessee-based Lutros, which began developing the system in 2009 and had also developed a solid transesterification catalyst.

Mark Mauss, president and CEO at Lutros, said the problems at the Bridgeport facility had stemmed more from equipment than Lutros’ technology.

Tri-State Biodiesel and Lard-NABF bought the Bridgeport facility in 2013 and began operating it in 2014.

Application to assess deforestation from soya launched outside Brazil

US environmental charity The Nature Conservancy and agritrader Bunge have launched their Agroideal application outside Brazil, allowing farmers to assess development risks and avoid deforestation.

The tool, which launched within Brazil in September 2017, enabled intelligent planning for continued soya expansion without forest degradation, wrote Feed Navigator on 20 April.

The international, upgraded version included better func-

tionality, expanded data and language support for English and Spanish in addition to Portuguese, said soya sector coordinator Rodrigo Spuri at The Nature Conservancy Brazil.

“In the Brazilian launch, we had only one biome inside the system, the Cerrado. Now we have inserted data from the Amazon Biome,” Spuri said.

In the application, soya traders could select a specific area they wanted to assess and determine the amount of land available for extension and considered to be risk areas, giving them a trusted source telling them where they could plant and which areas they should avoid.

Going forward, the team planned to include coverage of the Argentinian Chaco and livestock mapping within the Amazon, Cerrado and eventually the Paraguayan Chaco regions.

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Crown to launch innovation centre USA-based engineering firm Crown Iron Works is planning to launch an innovation centre in Minnesota next year to provide R&D and real-world processing solutions.

Founded in 1878 as an iron casting and steel fabrication company, the company became a process engineering provider for the edible oils industry in the 1940s and is celebrating its 140th anniversary this year, the firm said.

Crown supplies oilseed preparation, extraction and refining equipment and has expanded into new markets including biodiesel, nutraceuticals, speciality chemicals, food and waste industries. www.ofimagazine.com

PE Roundup.indd 4

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OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

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9/10/2018 9:42:48 AM

PALM OIL

The road to success Getting oil palm fruit bunches quickly to the mill is crucial in ensuring the best possible oil quality. Keeping plantation roads in good condition is essential in this process.

Pat Howes

W

ith a growing world population and per capita consumption of edible oils, there is an increasing need for effective production of sustainable oil-producing crops.

Oil palm trees are naturally high yielding and are not genetically modified, unlike soya and other seed oil crops. Oil palm also provides the highest yield of oil of all the major crops in the world market, and thus provides much better land utilisation (see Table 1, pg35).

The oil palm fruit produces two types of oil – crude palm oil (CPO) and crude palm kernel oil (CPKO). CPO is the largest traded edible oil globally and is mainly utilised as edible oils and fats. PKO is a lauric rich oil – similar to coconut oil – and is utilised in edible applications, such as for confectionery, and also as a feedstock for oleochemicals production. In order for the increasing global demand for edible oils and lauric-based oleochemicals to be satisfied in the most sustainable way, efficient cultivation of oil palm is essential.

Oil palms are naturally occurring in tropical regions where their need for constant sun and frequent rains are met.

Oil palm fruit bunches each typically weigh about 10-20kg and are manually harvested. During manual harvesting,

36 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Howes.indd 2

the fruits need to be carried to nearby plantation roads, where they are formed into small piles and later collected by, for example, tractor or trailers, and taken to the oil mill.

In order to achieve the optimum quality of crude oils extracted at the mills, the oil palm fruit must be harvested when just ripe and transported to and processed at the oil mill within a few hours. Prompt processing will minimise the free fatty acid (FFA) and partial glyceride content of the oil and maximise the yield of the main desirable component, the triglycerides.

It should be noted that the higher the level of partial glycerides in the oil is, the greater its tendency to form 3-MCPDs and glycidyl esters (GE), so prompt processing of the palm fruit is beneficial for both economic and health reasons.

Stabilising the surface

There are several factors involved that affect the time between harvesting and processing at the oil mill, one of the most important of which is the quality of the plantation roads. There are about 100m of road for each hectare of plantation, so for a plantation of 100,000ha, there are approximately 10,000km of roads that need to be maintained.

If the roads become difficult or impossible to navigate, the delivery of the fruit bunches to the oil mill will be delayed or may not even be able to take place.

In the worst case scenario, plantations might be unable to harvest as much as 70% of their crop, primarily due to the condition of the plantation road system.

Thus, maintaining the roads could yield more benefits than focusing on other areas, such as processes to increase oil extraction rates.

Being an equatorial crop, oil palm is

harvested continuously. It is therefore essential that the plantation roads remain in a usable condition throughout the year.

Many systems are utilised to make the roads more functional, including adding stones and rocks, logs, palm fronds, empty fruit bunches, and more sophisticated road surfacing materials incorporating bitumen, polymers, and lime for soil stabilisation. These systems are successful to varying degrees, depending on the nature of the soil and the road surface being stabilised.

The most challenging soil conditions are the fine silt soils that experience a high degree of swelling when wet.

These soils need to be stabilised against dimensional changes before a sustainable road surface can be laid. Historically, subsoil stabilisation has been achieved with the use of divalent ion-exchange media, typically lime (calcium hydroxide). The divalent ions replace the mono-valent ions in the soil, reducing the level of hydration, and thus reducing the plasticity and expansivity of the soil.

The soil stabilisation is, however, greater when the ion-exchange is carried out by utilising trivalent ions, as these reduce the hydration, plasticity and expansivity to a minimum. Fortunately, cost-effective trivalent soil stabilising agents are now available on the market. The tri-valent ion exchange media only needs to be thoroughly mixed with the swelling and/ or expansive clay-containing soil and left alone for a while in order for the ionexchange to take place.

The soil will shrink as it loses its excess moisture and will not expand to any great extent when exposed to water thereafter.

Thus, dimensional changes in the road sub-base will have been reduced to an acceptable level. www.ofimagazine.com

9/11/2018 1:00:09 PM

PALM OIL Once the sub-base has been stabilised against dimensional changes, it is necessary to form a durable and water resistant road surface. Tarmac road surfaces are rather expensive and generally do not last long in wet conditions.

Polymer enhanced tarmac systems can be better. Polymers may be sprayed on to the road surface to provide a measure of water resistance and dust control, but such systems have limited lifespan.

A more cost-effective and durable system utilises in-situ soil, cement powder, polymer/co-polymer, and some other proprietary ingredients. Such soil-cementpolymer (SCP) roads are hard, provide good traction for the plantation vehicles, are water resistant, and have life-spans of many years, depending on the exact environment and construction.

SCP road systems typically utilise the in-situ soil, so the costs of bringing stones and other materials to the road site are eliminated. The use of cement powder is normally about 5-7% of the weight of the soil in the road surface, which is only about one-third of the cement powder used in concrete roads.

The polymer is typically utilised at about

www.ofimagazine.com

Howes.indd 3

Crop

Yield (kg/ha/y)

Relative land area required

Corn (Maize)

147

34

Soya

375

13.3

Rapeseed (Canola)

1,000

5

Coconut

2,260

2.2

Oil palm

5,000

1

Source: Pat Howes

Road surface materials

Table 1: Yields and land requirements of various oil crops

0.25- 0.4% of the weight of the soil. This small amount of polymer produces a significant improvement in the strength, flexibility, durability and water resistance of the road.

Formation of the SCP road is achieved by first tilling the road surface to the required depth that is equal to the thickness of the final road surface.

Cement powder is spread over the tilled soil, which is mixed with the soil.

Once the soil and cement powder are thoroughly mixed, a polymer solution is sprayed onto the soil-cement mixture at the desired dosage. The SCP is then mixed together thoroughly, before it is compacted, graded, further compacted with a road roller and then given a final spraying of a diluted polymer to seal the surface.

The road will be ready for use in about three hours from final compaction, although the strength of the SCP road will improve over a 28-day period.

The importance of road profile and drainage channels to ensure that rain water can flow away from the road should not be overlooked. Quick and effective removal of water from the road will increase its life span.

With good plantation roads in place, the palm fruit can be promptly transported to the oil mill for processing to give a superior quality of CPO, with lower FFA and partial glycerides contents, such as is needed for the production of refined oils of lower 3-MCPD and GE content. ● Dr Pat Howes is the technical director at Malaysia’s Natural Bleach Sdn Bhd

OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

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9/11/2018 1:00:12 PM

INSTRUMENTATION

Global round-up Oils & Fats International reports on some of the latest instrumentation news and developments around the world

Effective degasser control provides accurate metering Edible oils and fats refiner Sime Darby Unimills (SDU) has introduced a degasser with ultra high-frequency radar measurement to accurately monitor the flow of ingredients from ships to storage tanks and its refinery.

The Dutch subsidiary of Malaysian plantation firm Sime Darby Berhad is active in refining crude vegetable oils and fats for the food and animal feed markets, supplying tailor-made vegetable oils and producing more than 450,000 tonnes/year of products.

Raw materials are delivered by inland tanker ships to its plant in Zwijndrecht and then processed, after which they are distributed to buyers in the industry across the Netherlands.

Until recently, the amount of fat and oil delivered was only randomly sampled and checked. Gerrit van den

Burg, instrumentation project leader at SDU, says: “We had a good relationship with the transport company, but we wanted to get rid of those sampling processes.

That cost us quite a lot of time and money.

Even more important to us was that we wanted to have a real time continuous insight into the quantity of our incoming and outgoing raw materials.”

Such measurements can only be done by properly controlling the degasser stage of the process. The reliable and accurate measurement of the flow from the ship to the storage tanks may seem like a simple job, but it is somewhat more complex.

“The problem is that what you pump out of that ship is not just liquid,” says Onno Roosendaal, account manager at process measurement technology developer Vega. Air bubbles get entrained in the oil when it is pumped.

Producers will want to get rid of them before the liquid passes through the meter.

Otherwise, the measurement is simply not accurate.

“By first sending the

liquid through a degasser, consisting of a standing cylindrical vessel, the air is effectively removed from the liquid, thus ensuring what you measure is just pure product,” says Roosendaal.

Disruption from entrained air The effective operation of the degasser can only be guaranteed if the liquid level in the vessel is maintained within a certain working area. Too high a level can disrupt the functioning of the degasser, while too low a level impedes the progress of the process. It is therefore important to ensure the liquid level is monitored and controlled.

The liquid density is not constant because of the entrained air, which rules out many technologies that need consistent density or electrical properties, such as pressure-, float-, capacitance- or displacer-based techniques. Pressure inside the tank can also change rapidly, ruling out using ultrasonic level sensors.

This means radar level measurement is the most reliable way to effectively measure and control the level in such a vessel. The level control also needs to be almost real-time, because the vessel is not particularly large.

However, the ability to perform a reliable level measurement with a contactless or through-air radar depends on a number of factors.

“The degassing tank is rather narrow and the inlet is halfway up the tank. Conventional wide beam radar measurement would register so much disturbance by the inlet alone that the actual level would hardly be measurable. This inlet creates a powerful liquid flow along the entire surface. The level meter must be able to measure the actual surface level in the confines of tank, close to the wall and turbulent inlet. In other words, you need a meter with a narrow beam angle,” explains Roosendaal.

A matter of frequency The transmission angle of a radar sensor is determined by the area of its antenna and the frequency. “Increasing the surface area of the antenna is not possible in such an application. What remains is to use a level meter that has a sufficiently high frequency,” says Roosendaal.

“Using a VegaPULS 64 80GHz radar (pictured), you can make a focused measurement with which you can really measure the level.

With this very small 1.5” version, it achieves a transmission angle of seven degrees and thanks to this strong focusing, the false echo from the inlet remains very small.” u

38 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Instrumentation.indd 2

www.ofimagazine.com

9/10/2018 9:44:46 AM

INSTRUMENTATION Corteva to help Brazil improve sustainability in agriculture RSSL opens Corteva Agriscience, the agriculture division of chemical firm DowDuPont, will supply global soyabean leader Brazil with tools to conduct research to enhance farming competitiveness and sustainability.

A four-year agreement between Corteva and Embrapa, the research arm of Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, would see Corteva provide technology and digital tools to Embrapa to conduct research focusing on improving pest and drought tolerance in crops, enhance post-harvest quality of agri products and minimise environmental

impacts, the firm said in a 21 May statement.

The digital tools would also be used to support early-on disease detection and to improve forecasting and modelling capabilities for decision makers.

“Embrapa’s top priorities are to increase Brazil’s agricultural sustainability and to enhance the livelihoods and competitiveness of its farmers,” said Embrapa president Mauricio A Lopes.

“Genomics and advanced digital tools are two of the most powerful strategies to do that,” he added.

Light, oxygen reduce canola oil shelf life A team of researchers from Japans’ Tohoku University (TU) has provided the most detailed picture of canola oil’s oxidation process to date, providing useful clues on how to extend product shelf life.

The scientists used a technique called high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), in which the canola oil was pumped under high pressure through a granular adsorbent material to separate components contained in it, TU said on 12 January.

These components were then further broken into smaller parts by bombarding them with neutral molecules and analysed in a process tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS).

Using HPLC-MS/MS analysis, the research team developed a new technique to examine different isomers, which are formed when triacylglycerol (TG) – a major component in edible oil – oxidises.

The team identified the specific oxidation compounds in canola oil resulting from heat between 25°C and 180°C – the latter being a usual frying temperature – and light, ranging from office lighting to direct sunlight.

The study revealed that commercially marketed canola oil tended to oxidise by light at approximate room temperatures, suggesting that using dark containers for the oil could extend shelf life by reducing exposure to light.

u Effective degasser control (continued) Roosendaal says these feature were evident from the echo diagnostics in this application. “Thanks in part to the high dynamic range of the sensor, our readings show us there is a very good measurement reliability of 35dB. That’s a signal strength figure where we know there is plenty in hand to be able to determine and follow the level properly”, adds Roosendaal.

“You have to add in the fact that in this application we are also dealing with a low reflectivity (dielectric constant or dK) liquid and a turbulent surface. A high frequency 40 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Instrumentation.indd 3

Additionally, adding antioxidants, such as carotenoids, into the oil could trap oxygen before it has a chance to interact with the oil, further improving shelf life.

The research team said that their approach could prove valuable for the edible oil industry as it provided a better understanding of oil and food oxidation.

It could lead to the development of new methods to combat food deterioration, the study concluded.

radar is better suited for liquids with a low dK than a lower frequency radar. It is the various properties of this particular radar level meter that combine to offer a very good solution. It has a high frequency, a very small transmission angle and a large dynamic range. This means that you can still reliably measure level in a small and narrow tank with a product that has both a low dK and a turbulent surface.”

Good results SDU says introducing the VegaPULS 64 means it now knows exactly what is coming into its factory.

testing facility for acrylamide UK scientific consultacy and analyst Reading Scientific Services Ltd (RSSL) has established a dedicated acrylamide testing laboratory to increase capacity and reduce turnaround times.

“The prospect and subsequent adoption of new EU acrylamide legislation has prompted a rise in demand.

The expansion of our team and laboratory space not only enables us to handle a large number of test samples in a short time frame, it is also highly cost efficient, ” said RSSL senior scientist and technical specialist Emilie Clauzier in a July statement.

RSSL had developed a bespoke approach to acrylamide detection using Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry – one of the two EU-recommended analytical techniques – and its own modified test method specifically designed to ramp up volume capabilities.

RSSL held UK Accreditation Service (UKAS) accreditation for biscuits, which was also applicable to all relevant food categories, such as crisps, coffee and breads.

“Demonstrating compliance with the legislation is a priority for our customers and, due to the variability of certain raw materials, regular monitoring of products throughout the year is now essential,” Clauzier said.

“The outgoing stream we have mapped long ago. If you are talking about traceability, we are now well prepared for the future,” says van den Burg.

“For a reliable flow measurement, a quick and accurate level measurement is required. The field of ultra high-frequency radar measurement is still relatively new but Vega is the only party with a lot of experience with that technique.

“Now that we have such good experience with this non-contact radar, it could also be interesting to replace the guided radar in our large storage tanks,” van den Burg concludes. ● www.ofimagazine.com

9/10/2018 9:44:47 AM

SUSTAINABILITY

Flight path to alternative fuel

S

ustainable jet fuel from a broad range of feedstocks and technologies is being commercially developed now with some 250M gallons/year of offtake agreements already in place, according to Steve Csonka, executive director of the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative (CAAFI), a North American public private partnership, working on behalf of the aviation industry.

Csonka says common misconceptions about sustainable jet fuel are that they are a decade away from reality, that they are unproven, unsafe or inferior, have burdensome infrastructure/handling needs, or that the low price of crude oil had stopped all development efforts.

In fact, sustainable jet fuels are a key component in meeting the aviation industry’s commitments to decouple increases in carbon emissions from traffic growth. “Airlines will take all the sustainable jet fuel they can get but at parity pricing,” says Csonka.

Worldwide air traffic is expected to grow by 5%/year, he adds. “In the USA, 25bn gallons/year of jet fuel are consumed. Worldwide, the figure is 87bn gallons/year.”

This equates to a third of the diesel used globally, or 264M tonnes of hydrocarbon output or 1.6M barrels/day of production.

“Aviation takes its environmental

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Jet Fuel 5pg.indd 2

With some 250M gallons/year of offtake agreements for sustainable jet fuel supply, the fossil fuel alternative is no longer a concept but a pending commercial reality. Serena Lim responsibility seriously,” Csonka says, and has made progress in noise reduction and tackling pollutants from planes.

“While achieving carbon neutral growth from 2020 seems feasible based on our progress, achieving 50% fewer carbon emissions by 2050 remains a huge task” given that a 460% increase in emissions is projected by 2050 if no action is taken, or 300% increase if 1.5% of annual fuel efficiency improvements continue to be introduced (see Figure 1, p42).

Emissions targets

Globally, there are various targets for emissions reduction and alternative fuel use in aviation. The International Air Transport Association has set ambitious targets to curb fuel consumption and mitigate emissions, in which the aviation industry has committed to an average improvement in fuel efficiency of 1.5%/ year from 2010 to 2020 and a cap on aviation CO2 emissions from 2020. By 2050, the goal is to reduce CO2 emissions from aviation by 50%, relative to 2005 levels.

In 2016, the UN’s International Civil

Aviation Organization (ICAO) also agreed on a Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) to reduce CO2 emissions from international aviation with a pilot phase from 2021-2023, followed by a first phase from 2024-2026.

Participation in both of these stages will be voluntary and the next phase from 2027-2035 would see all states on board, with the exception of small developing countries or those with very low levels of international aviation activity.

Alternative fuel criteria

Alternative fuels in aviation must meet several criteria in order to be viable, according to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Their properties have to be within acceptable limits in terms of viscosity, freeze point and fluid flow at low temperatures. They must allow for engine re-light at altitude, and their compounds should not adversely impact flame stability.

Compared with fossil-derived jet fuel, their energy content should be as high or higher, and their greenhouse gas (GHG) u OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

41

31/08/2018 14:36

Commercial Aviation’s CO2 commitments To decouple carbon growth from demand growth

SUSTAINABILITY

Biofuels a key component of GHG containment strategy

improvements

CNG 2020

SAJF offtake agreements

Beyond numerous demonstration programs

Figure 1: Aviation’s emissions reduction roadmap

neat quantities

27 April 2018

4

Similar commitment from BizAv & DOD

*

Fulcrum Bioenergy, Red Rock Biofuels and Velocys in the USA and abroad.

SOURCE: CAAFI

1.5% annual fuel efficiency

These industry commitments are currently being converted into regulation through an ICAO/CAEP “basket of measures”:  CO2 Standards  MBMs – will monetize carbon

Up to 5 M gpy from 2016 (LAX) 3 yr agreement 30/70 blend 3 yr agreement Enabling LAX flts Halmstad Bioports Arlanda on demand, Bromma Goteborg et al.

SAJF offtake agreements

90-180 M gpy

Beyond numerous demonstration programs

50 M gpy

10 yr agreements

Leeuwarden

37.5M gpy

neat quantities

10 July 2018

* AltAir also continues supplying fuel for multiple trial and research activities

A350 deliveries 10% blend (ex-TLS) 10M gpy, 10 yrs (JFK) 4M gpy, 10 yrs (LAX) Up to 1M gpy, 5 yrs+

These offtakes/efforts represent >250 M gpy, and account for the 1

total production slate of the first several commercialization efforts

Figure 2: Sustainable alternative jet fuel offtake agreements u

emissions should be lower.

Csonka says fats, oil and greases are very close in composition to aviation fuel and the conversion of tallow or used cooking oil (UCO) to Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids (HEFA) had been shown to achieve a 65% and 78% reduction in GHG emissions respectively.

They feature in several of the sustainable jet fuel processes already approved or currently under review by the aviation industry.

There are currently five approved pathways pathways to produce drop-in fuel blending components for aviation, 42 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Jet Fuel 5pg.indd 3

specified by global standards body ASTM in the ASTM D7566-18 Standard Specification for Aviation Turbine Fuel Containing Synthesized Hydrocarbons.

The five pathways are: The Fischer Tropsch Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene (FT-SPK) process converts coal, natural gas or biomass into liquid hydrocarbons through a first gasification step, followed by Fischer Tropsch synthesis. It requires blending with jet fuel at levels up to 50%. This was approved as Annex A1 in September 2009 and is planned for use by companies such as

SOURCE: CAAFI

Brisbane Supply Demonstration

10 July 2018

Synthetic Iso-paraffin from Fermented Hydroprocessed Sugar (HFS-SIP) (formerly referred to as Direct-Sugar-toHydrocarbon) converts sugars to a pure C15 paraffin molecule using advanced fermentation.

Developed by French oil and energy giant Total and US industrial bioscience company Amyris, the process converts plant sugars into a hydrocarbon molecule called farnesane. SIP was approved in Annex A3 in June 2014 for a blending ratio of up to 10% with conventional jet fuel.

The Fischer Tropsch (FT) Synthetic Kerosene with Aromatics (FT-SKA) process also uses coal, natural gas or biomass – such as municipal solid waste, agricultural waste and forest waste – and adds some alkylated benzenes. This has been approved as Annex A4.

1% of GVA supply 3 M gpy each, 7 yrs (Bay Area, CA)

1

The Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids (HEFA-SPK) process converts vegetable oils, animal fats or waste oils into synthetic paraffinic kerosene by deoxygenation and hydroprocessing.

The process was certified for blends of up to 50% in Annex A2 in July 2011 and is used by AltAir Fuels, USA and Neste, Finland.

The Alcohol to Jet SPK (ATJ-SPK) process starts from an alcohol to produce a SPK through dehydration of the alcohol to an olefinic gas, followed by oligomerisation (to obtain longer chain length liquid olefins), hydrogenation and fractionation.

Isobutanol-derived jet fuel was the first ATJ-SPK to be specificed under Annex A5 in 2016, which allowed US renewable chemicals and biofuels company Gevo Inc’s renewable jet fuel to be blended at up to 30% in commercial airline operations. A later revision in April 2018 lifted the blend ratio limit for ATJ-SPK fuels to 50%.

In April this year, Annex A5 was revised to add ethanol as a feedstock, paving the way for renewable jet fuel from US firms such as biofuels provider Byogy Renewables, Gevo and carbon recycling company LanzaTech. LanzaTech began construction of Europe’s first commercial bioethnol-from-gas facility in June 2018.

The US$150M, 80M litres/year plant is located in Belgium, at the site of leading steel maker ArcelorMittal’s facility in Ghent. LanzaTech uses microbes that feed on carbon monoxide, hydrogen and carbon dioxide to produce bioethanol. www.ofimagazine.com

31/08/2018 14:36

SUSTAINABILITY Current offtake deals

Current offtake agreements between alternative fuel producers and airlines total more than 250M gallons/year, representing the first few commercial efforts in sustainable jet fuel (see Figure 2, p42). They include: AltAir Fuels 2016 agreement to supply the USA’s United Airlines with up to 5M gallons/year of fuel at Los Angeles Airport, in collaboration with World Fuel Services, USA. AltAir Fuels was bought by World Energy, one of the largest biofuel suppliers in North America, in March 2018 and has a 45M gallons/year renewable diesel and jet fuel production facility in Paramount, California.

AltAir is also producing its 30% renewable/70% petroleum jet fuel as part of a three-year contract that US business jet aircraft manufacturer Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation signed with World Fuel Services in 2015 for the purchase of up to 1.3bn litres/year of renewable fuels for daily operations in Savannah, Georgia.

In another agreement, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and German airline Lufthansa signed three-year deals in 2016 to buy fuel produced by AltAir and supplied by Amsterdam-based sustainable jet fuel supplier SkyNRG for flights departing from Los Angeles airport.

Air BP, the aviation division of British oil and gas giant BP, announced in January 2016 that Norway’s Oslo Airport would become the first in the world to make bio jet fuel available to all airlines, with Air BP providing a minimum of 1.25M litres of the fuel. The announcement was made together with Norwegian airport operator Avinor and SkyNRG, with Lufthansa, KLM and Swedish national carrier SAS confirming they would be buying the fuel. The bio jet fuel – produced from camelina oil – was sourced from the Porvoo refinery of Finnish oil refiner and renewable diesel producer Neste. Air BP is one of the world’s largest suppliers of aviation fuel products and currently supplies over 7bn gallons/year of jet kerosene and aviation gasoline.

Fulcrum Bioenergy converts municipal solid waste (MSW) into fuels through gasification of the organic material in MSW feedstock into a synthesis gas, which is purified and processed through the Fischer-Tropsch process to produce a syncrude product that is then upgraded to jet fuel or diesel.

In 2014, Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific Airways announced it was investing in Fulcrum and had also negotiated a long-term supply agreement for 375.M gallons/year over 10 years.

In June 2015, United Airlines www.ofimagazine.com

Jet Fuel 5pg.indd 4

US renewable fuel company Velocys has a pilot plant in Ohio, USA (pictured above) and is building a biorefinery in Natchez, Mississippi

announced it was investing US$30M in Fulcrum, with a supply agreement for 90M gallons/year of fuel through long-term fuel offtake agreements.

In November 2016, BP announced it would invest US$30M in Fulcrum and secured a 10-year offtake agreement for 50M gallons/year, which Air BP would distribute and supply at key hubs across North America.

Fulcrum’s first plant is under construction in Nevada and is expected to process approximately 175,000 tonnes/ year of MSW, creating 10.5M gallons/ year of syncrude. It is expected to begin operations in 2020. Its second plant will reportedly be in Chicago and its third on the US west coast in or near California.

Colorado-based Red Rock Biofuels announced an agreement in July 2015 to produce approximately 3M gallons/year of jet fuel from 2017-2024 for FedEx Express, a subsidiary of US courier service FedEx Corp. FedEx joins Southwest Airlines in purchasing Red Rock’s total available volume of jet fuel from its first commercial plant in Lakeview, Oregon – which broke ground in July – and will

convert approximately 140,000 dry tonnes of woody biomass into 40% jet fuel, 40% diesel and 20% naphtha, or 6M, 6M and 3M gallons respectively. The Southwest Airlines offtake agreement of 3M gallons/year for seven years was signed in September 2014.

Red Rock gasifies woody biomass to produce synthesis gas, which is cleaned and sent through the Fischer-Tropsch process to produce a liquid hydrocarbon that is hydroprocessed to produce jet, diesel, and naptha fuels.

US industrial bioscience company Amyris began a two-year programme in May 2016 with Cathay Pacific, in which its 10% blended sugarcane-derived fuel would be used on all Airbus A350 delivery flights from Toulose to Hong Kong. The Amyris/Total process converts plant sugars (sugarcane) into a hydrocarbon molecule called farnesane, with the fuel produced at the Amyris biorefinery in southeastern Brazil. Airbus recently announced this programme will continue with A350-1000 delivery flights that commenced in June 2018.

US bioenergy company SG Preston

u

OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 43

31/08/2018 14:36

u

announced a 10-year agreement in September 2016 with New York airline jetBlue in which it would supply 33M gallons/year of fuel for at least 10 years at John F Kennedy Airport, New York. The fuel will consist of 30% renewable jet fuel blended with 70% traditional Jet-A fuel.

In October 2017, Australian airline Qantas also announced it would be buying 8M gallons/year of renewable jet fuel from SG Preston over the next 10 years to fuel its Los Angeles-to-Australia aircraft.

In a 10-year agreement announced in November 2013, top aircraft engine supplier GE Aviation said it would be buying 500,000 gallons/year of cellulosic synthetic biofuel from Washington-based D’Arcinoff Group (DG) for the testing of its jet engines at is primary engine test facility in Peebles, Ohio. The fuel will be produced via gasification of biomass to produce syngas, followed by FischerTropsch conversion.

These deals represent 250M gallons/ year of offtake agreements, says Csonka, but other recent announcements also represent further expansion.

Recent announcements

In July, SAS and Sweden’s largest fuel company, Preem, announed that they would be collaborating to produce renewable jet fuel at Preem’s planned capacity expansion at its Gothenburg refinery, with total ethylene capacity for biofuels of 1Mm3 and an estimated startup date of 2022.

US renewable chemicals and biofuels firm Gevo announced in June that it had struck its first long-term commercial deal for its alcohol-to-jet fuel (ATJ), and will supply Avfuel Corporation, a leading US supplier of aviation fuel and services.

In the first phase of the deal, Gevo will supply Avfuel from its smaller-scale hydrocarbon processing facility in Silsbee, Texas, which can produce 70,000 gallons/ year of renewable hydrocarbon products (50% ATJ and 50% isooctane). Gevo plans to build a larger scale hydrocarbon plant at is existing ethanol and isobutanol facility in Luverne, Minnesota. At its completion, phase 2 of the five-year Avfuel agreement would begin, comprising larger volumes of up to 1M gallons/year of unblended ATJ. In addition, Gevo announced in October 2017 that it would supply Virgin Australia Group with ATJ for flights departing from Brisbane Airport.

US renewable fuel company Velocys announced in September 2017 that it is partnering with British Airways to prepare the case for a commercial waste-torenewable-jet fuel plant in the UK, with the aim of reaching a final investment 44 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Jet Fuel 5pg.indd 5

Catalytic Hydrothermolysis (CH) combined with hydroprocessing, which has the potential to convert vegetable oils and animal fats and greases, including waste oils and industrial oil crops, directly into a drop-in jet fuel without blending with conventional fuel (the final product contains both paraffins and aromatics).

This pathway is being developed by Applied Research Associates (ARA), and approval is expected by early 2019. ARA, along with its partner Chevron-Lummus Global, expect to license the technology to commercial developers, several of which are progressing through front-end engineering for facilities in the USA and Japan.

decision in 2019. Velocys converts residues from forestry operations into fuel and its first US biorefinery is being built in Natchez, Adams County, Mississippi.

Neste announced a collaboration with American Airlines in November 2017 to explore opportunities for renewable fuel use, including acceptance and commercialisation of high freeze point HEFA (HFP-HEFA) renewable jet fuel, which is currently under consideration for approval by ASTM. Neste also said in June that it would work with Dallas Fort Worth International Airport to explore renewable fuel use.

Canadian biotech firm Agrisoma Biosciences has a partnership with Qantas that will see it provide Qantas with a regular supply of aviation biofuel by 2020. The two companies will work with Australian farmers to grow carinata on 400,000ha of land, enough to produce more than 200M litres/year of biofuel and fulfil up to 50% of Qantas’ annual fuel needs. On 28 January this year, its 10% blend jet fuel was used by Qantas on a 15-hour flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne.

Dubai-based Petrixo Oil & Gas announced in 2014 that it would produce biojet fuel and renewable diesel at a new refinery to be built in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates. Petrixo will use Honeywell UOP technology to process around 500,000 tonnes/year of renewable feedstocks into biojet fuel and renewable diesel.

Hydro-Deoxygenated Synthesised Kerosene (HDO-SK) consisting of C9-C16 paraffins and napthenes and Hydrodeoxygenated Synthesised Aromatic Kerosene (HDO-AK) consisting of C9-11 aromatics. The process is specific to US renewables firm Virent Inc and a 50% blending ratio with conventional jet fuel is targeted for approval. It can convert starch, sugar and lignocellulose into a hydrocarbon fuel through aqueous phase reforming, condensation and hydrotreating.

Virent – which was acquired by US petroleum refiner Tesoro Corp in 2016 – is working with Japanese chemical group Toray Industries, global speciality chemicals firm Johnson Matthey and The Coca-Cola Company to scale up its technology and build a commercial scale plant. Global oil and gas multinational Royal Dutch Shell is also a long-term collaborator with Virent, announcing in 2012 that it had built a pilot plant at its Westhollow Technology Center in

More pathways to fuel

Although there are currently five approved pathways to produce drop-in bio jet fuel, the aviation industry is also reviewing various additional jet fuel production processes (see Figure 3, below), including:

Co-products in the bio-aviation fuel pathways Oil Crops Algae Waste Oil

Starch and Sugar Crops

Oil Extraction

Fermentation

Meal

DGS

Cellulosic Biomass (e.g,. Herbaceous, Woody, Ag. and Forest Residue, etc.)

Hydrolysis

Gasification

Pyrolysis Biochar

Electricity

Bio-Oil

Alcohol

Sugar

Syngas

Pyro-Oil

Hydroprocessing

ATJ

STJ

Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis

Hydroprocessing

Other fuels

Other fuels

Fischer-Tröpsch Jet

Pyrolysis Renewable Jet

Other fuels

Other fuels

Other fuels

Electricity Hydroprocessed Renewable Jet

Alcohol-To-Jet

Sugar-To-Jet

15 | Bioenergy Technologies Office Figure 3: Co-products in the bio-aviation fuel pathways

Electricity

1

SOURCE: US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

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SUSTAINABILITY

www.ofimagazine.com

31/08/2018 14:36

U.S. Lipid feedstocksSUSTAINABILITY

▪ The use of hydrogenation derived renewable diesel (HDRD or green diesel) as a jet fuel blending component.

▪ The expansion of Annex A1 to include oils from bio-sources that are not esters and fatty acids, currently being driven

by IHI of Japan.

▪ A more direct catalytic conversion of alcohols (Vertimass, Byogy and Swedish Biofuels) ▪ Conversion of pyrolysis oils.

▪ Global Bioenergies’ biochemical production of isobutene converted to jet fuel.

▪ The use of hydrothermal liquefaction of wet, oily feedstocks.

The idea of co-processing middle distillates and bio-oils in a conventional refinery to give an acceptable ‘coprocessed’ product for jet fuel as a sidestream to automotive diesel manufacture is also being explored by energy firms such as Chevron, BP and Phillips 66.

Additionally, Fulcrum Bioenergy is now exploring the the expansion of refinery co-processing to include Fischer Tropsch biocrude.

USA is leader

The USA is the leader when it comes to players and processes for sustainable jet fuel development.

Some major expansion plans in the pipeline for sustainable jet fuel or HDRD production include: In a joint venture called Diamond Green www.ofimagazine.com

Jet Fuel 5pg.indd 6

Potentially enabling of significant production …

Multiple:

Targeting most sustainable solutions:

Low, or Zero, impact LUC/ILUC & F-v-F solutions; Environmental Services a plus.

   

Conversion processes Feedstock developers Producers Low LUC/ILUC agri-based feedstocks  Waste F.O.G.  White Grease, Poultry Fat, Tallow  UCO / Yellow Grease  Brown Grease, Biosolids

Easier supply chain scaleup leveraging biodiesel and HDRD production capacity Lowered H2 cost & availability (from NG) helps 27 April 2018

SOURCE: CAAFI

Houston utilising Virent’s technology.

Shell also completed construction in 2017 of a five tonne/day pilot plant in Bangalore, India, demonstrating IH2 technology, which turns wood, algae and municipal waste into fuel. In the same year, it signed an agreement with Canada’s SBI BioEnergy giving it exclusive development and licensing rights for SBI’s continuous catalytic process to convert waste oils, greases and vegetable oils into drop-in diesel, jet fuel and petrol. SBI has a demonstration facility in Edmonton that was due to produce 10M litres/year by the end of 2017, with a 240M litres/year commercial scale facility was due to be online.

These deals give Shell a footprint with cellulose, sugars and lipids. Shell recently initiated fuel qualification for IH2 by delivering fuel to the ASTM D4054 Clearinghouse at the University of Dayton, kicking off the testing needed for industry approval.

According to the FAA, other pathways that could also enter the pipeline in the future are:

17

Figure 4: US lipid feedstocks

Diesel, Diamond Alternative Energy LLC – a subsidiary of Valero Energy Corporation – has partnered with renderer Darling Ingredients to build a 10,000 barrel/day renewable diesel refinery near the Valero St Charles Refinery in Norco, Louisiana, to process recycled animal fat, used cooking oil and other feedstocks into renewable diesel fuel.

In March 2017, it was announced that the Diamond Green diesel facility in Norco would increase its annual production capacity from 10,000 barrels/day to 18,000 barrels/day (275M gallons/year).

It has also announced plans to expand further once current capacity increases are completed.

Renewable Energy Group (REG) Geismar is a commercial-scale renewable hydrocarbon diesel production facility in Geismar, Louisiana. The multi-feedstock production facility can utilise a variety of lower cost feedstocks to manufacture approximately 75M gallons of renewable hydrocarbon diesel, renewable naphtha and renewable LPG. REG acquired the facility in 2014 and, in August 2017, completed its US$20M acquisition of land at Geismar, creating opportunities for expansion. The company said then that the plant was operating at 103% capacity utilisation.

REG is also evaluating a number of other sites for expansion including its plants in Seneca, Illinois and Grays Harbor, Washington, in addition to other West Coast locations.

In March 2018, World Energy acquired AltAir Fuels and its surrounding 25ha refinery in Paramount, California for US$72M. At present, AltAir Fuel produces more than 40M gallons/year of renewable

fuels including diesel, jet, and petrol blending components using fat, oil and grease feedstocks. This acquisition creates World Energy’s fifth renewable fuel manufacturing plant and its first on the west coast.

Its other plants are located in Houston, Texas; Natchez, Mississippi; Rome, Georgia; and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

World Energy’s acquisition of AltAir Fuels provides the opportunity to significantly expand the Paramount facility’s renewable fuel production by using hydrotreating and other refinery infrastructure at the site that has gone unutilised for some time.

Along with SG Preston doubling its planned capacity to 240M gallons/year facility, ARA licensing out activities that can tap into the brown grease market and UOP licensing for refinery retrofits, expansion in the USA could represent more than 1bn gallons/year of capacity by 2021.

These expansions would need to be met from purpose grown feedstocks.

“We are looking for solutions that fit local criteria,” Csonka says.

These could include pongamia in southern USA; winter carinata grown as a winter cash cover crop in the southeast USA; pennycress which can withstand hard frosts and fits in the soya/corn rotation; tall oil from the pulp and paper industry; white grease, poultry fat, tallow, used cooking oil, yellow grease and brown grease (see Figure 4, above).

Going forward, additional sustainable feedstocks of significant volume such as the offgases from steel mills, MSW, and direct air capture of CO2 are waiting to be utilised. ● OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

45

31/08/2018 14:36

STATISTICS STATISTICAL NEWS FROM MINTEC Palm oil

Palm oil prices have been volatile during August as a decrease in demand and a general downward trend in the vegetable oil market were met with concerns over production levels for the 2018/19 season.

Prices fell at the beginning of the month in line with the severe price drops seen in competing soyabean oil pricing, with further downward pressure applied by falling demand from the main importer of palm oil, India.

A weakening Indian rupee and higher tariffs on foreign imports made palm oil imports unattractive to Indian buyers, reducing demand severely.

Prices then rose as concerns grew over the conditions of palm plantations. Yields from trees remained below the 10-year average for the second consecutive month at 78% compared with 75% during July.

EU palm oil price, 2013-2018 (US$/tonne)

Soyabean oil

Soyabean oil prices were also unstable over August as the ongoing trade war between the USA and China pushed down heavily on feedstock soyabean prices and therefore soyabean oil.

However, towards the end of the month, prices began to rise due to increased demand for soyabean meal and a correction in feedstock soyabean prices.

Soyabean and soyabean oil prices fell as uncertainty over the impact of trade tariffs on the US market resulted in widespread selling of stocks, alongside liquidation of stocks by market speculators. Prices faced further downward pressure as production for the 2018/19 season was forecast up 4% y-o-y at 57.7M tonnes.

However, at the end of the month, prices began to rise as a result of a sharp upwards correction in feedstock soyabean prices, which had fallen too far in reaction to trade tariffs.

Additionally, increased demand for soyabean meal, a by-product of the soyabean oil production process, boosted the profitability of soyabean oil, pushing prices higher.

EU soyabean oil price, 2013-2018 (US$/tonne)

US soyabean price, 2013-2018 (US$/bushel) Prices of selected oils (US$/tonne) 2017

Mar 18

Apr 18

May 18

Jun 18

Jul 18

Soyabean

829.0

823.1

815.9

792.4

782.0

771.9

Crude palm

690.0

684.1

675.6

663.4

638.3

604.2

Palm olein Coconut Rapeseed Sunflower

661.0

656.5

654.0

640.9

615.6

583.3

1,537.0

1,124.3

1,130.0

1,040.3

937.3

1,916.4

855.0

795.2

791.8

807.7

811.9

833.1

800.0

798.5

815.2

789.9

759.6

758.2

1,250.0

1,019.5

1,010.8

944.1

851.4

871.1

Average

946.0

843.0

842.0

811.0

771.0

763.0

Index

224.0

200.0

199.0

192.0

183.0

181.0

Palm kernel

46 OFI – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Stats SepOct18.indd 1

Mintec works in partnership with sales, purchasing and supply chain professionals to deliver valuable insight into worldwide commodity and raw materials markets using innovative technology and a knowledgeable team of specialists. We provide independent insight and trusted data to help the world's most prestigious brands to make informed commercial decisions.

Tel: +44 (0)1628 851313 Email: sales@mintecglobal.com Web: www.mintecglobal.com

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