FutureFuel delays restart of its biodiesel plant in Batesville, Arkansas
Biodiesel and chemical producer FutureFuel Corp. provided an update Feb. 28 on when the company plans to restart its 60-million-gallon-per-year biodiesel plant in Batesville, Arkansas.
In late January, FutureFuel announced that it had initiated a turnaround of the facility in December.
At the time, this turnaround was planned to last through February, making March the earliest it planned to restart the biodiesel plant.
Severe inclement weather in the Batesville area during February, however, has impacted the company’s ability to complete the turnaround and restart the various production processes it operates in Batesville, FutureFuel noted.
Therefore, the company said biodiesel production will likely not restart until the end of March at the earliest.
Other processes are anticipated to ramp up in early March.
In late January, the company said the turnaround undertaken in Batesville had proven more extensive than expected.
FutureFuel also noted in late January that “biodiesel production has been enabled through the support of Section 40A, the blenders tax credit, which expired on Dec. 31, 2024. This key incentive program has been replaced by a producer’s tax credit, 45Z, which became effective Jan. 1, 2025.”
The company added in January that the applicable government agencies have not yet published sufficient details of the 45Z clean fuel production credit, which was passed in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
“This creates a level of uncertainty for the biodiesel industry, which has caused other biodiesel producers and their capacity to go offline,” FutureFuel stated in late January.
“The company will be closely monitoring this as it considers its approach to biodiesel production and its role in the biofuels market,” it added.
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