Companies to Buy TX Biodiesel Plant

OAKHURST, N.J. (DTN) -- BIOX Corporation and World Energy today announced a 50/50 joint venture to acquire and operate a 90-million-gallon biodiesel production facility in Houston, Texas. Each company has committed $10 million to the World Energy BIOX Biofuels joint venture.

The facility, formerly known as Green Earth fuels, is located within the Kinder Morgan Liquids terminal on the Houston Ship Channel and is the third largest biodiesel production facility in North America.

The plant acquisition is scheduled to close by the end of this month. Plant commissioning and startup will ramp up over the third quarter.

"This joint venture with World Energy and the acquisition of a 90 million USG facility provide BIOX an opportunity to significantly expand and diversify our production capacity in combination with a high quality partner," said Alan Rickard, CEO of BIOX. "It is a large scale asset that is well positioned to supply biodiesel for compliance with the Federal Renewable Fuel Standard in the U.S. market."

Rickard furthered, "As we see the distribution of our products from our facilities shifting from the U.S. markets to fulfill the mandates under Ontario's Green Diesel Initiative, this acquisition provides us with a strategically positioned production facility from which we can address the U.S. market in partnership with World Energy."

Gene Gebolys, CEO of World Energy, said the joint venture "enables us to lever our collective strengths to serve customers better than ever before with unparalleled logistical access by rail, truck, barge, ship, and pipeline to the biggest biofuels markets in the U.S. and beyond."

With the establishment of the World Energy BIOX JV, the board of directors of BIOX has accepted the request of Robert Beamish to retire from the board. To fill the vacancy left by Beamish's retirement, the board has accepted Gebolys, effective as of the closing of the transaction. In addition, the board has determined that is an appropriate time to appoint Rickard to the board of directors.

Boston-based World Energy is an advanced biofuels supplier with 200 million gallons of production capacity in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas, and over 16 million gallons of biofuels storage servicing major markets in North America and beyond.

BIOX is a renewable energy company that owns and operates approximately 450 million liters of nameplate biodiesel production capacity at plants located in southern Ontario and Houston.

(BM/AG)

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