Valero, Darling boards greenlight construction of renewable diesel plant in Port Arthur, Texas

Darling Ingredients Inc. and Valero Energy Corp. announced in late January that their 50/50 joint venture, Diamond Green Diesel, has received approval from both companies’ boards of directors to proceed with the construction of a new renewable diesel production facility to be located at Valero’s Port Arthur, Texas, refinery.

DGD Port Arthur’s capacity is estimated to be 470 MMgy of renewable diesel. This new plant is anticipated to commence operations in the second half of 2023. Once operational, and when combined with the increased capacity at the Norco, Louisiana, facility (currently 290 MMgy with an anticipated increase of 400 million gallons due to be operational later this year), DGD’s total annual production capacity is expected to be approximately 1.2 billion gallons of renewable diesel and 50 million gallons of renewable naphtha. The current estimated construction cost is $1.45 billion to be split equally between the joint-venture partners and funded from internal cash flows provided by DGD.

“The board of directors of Darling Ingredients is pleased to be moving forward with the construction of DGD at Port Arthur,” said Randall Stuewe, chairman and CEO of Darling Ingredients. “The project is moving forward immediately and we fully plan to utilize the first mover advantage DGD has in North America as we believe Darling’s vertical integration coupled with Valero’s refining expertise are key to providing low-carbon feedstocks to the DGD renewable diesel platform.”

Joe Gorder, Valero chairman and CEO, said, “We expect low-carbon fuel policies to continue to expand globally and drive demand for renewable fuels, and to that end, we are applying our liquid fuels expertise to continue to expand our long-term competitive advantage in low-carbon transportation fuels with the expansion of DGD.”