W2Fuel’s 15-million-gallon-per-year biodiesel plant in Adrian, Michigan, is back online after being shut down at the beginning of the year, according to the company’s chief executive officer.
“We brought it back up right after Labor Day,” Roy Strom said last week on the sidelines of the 17th Annual OPIS RFS, RINs & Biofuels Forum in Chicago. “We’ve spent all that time doing extended maintenance, fixing anything that ever was wrong.”
Strom said the company had been waiting for better margins before restarting the facility. “Margins are still not good, but I can at least cover variable costs now,” he noted. “They improved after the Big, Beautiful Bill came out. It’s enough to get it up, get it running, prove the plant works like it should.”
The plant is currently operating five days a week at “maybe 60% to 65% of capacity,” Strom said. The company hopes margins will strengthen enough to ramp production further.
“We’re keeping an eye out for margins to improve to the point where we can ramp up all the way to 100% by January,” he said.
While the facility is rated at 15 million gallons per year, Strom acknowledged that it has not yet reached that level. “The belief is that the plant can do 15 million gallons per year, but we haven’t done it yet,” he said. “We’ve always been a little bit short, but we think it will get there.”
Strom also signaled interest in potential future growth. Increasing capacity to 20 million gallons per year would require “a significant investment,” but could be considered once market clarity improves. “Once we have some clarity, it’s something that would be on the table because scale matters,” he said.
He did not rule out acquiring or constructing additional plants but expressed a preference for capacity-based arrangements. “If things made sense, I could see us maybe doing that,” he said. “But our preference would be not to have to buy physical assets — just buy the capacity, which you can do through tolling or contractor arrangements [with other plants]. I don’t feel the need to actually own the physical assets.”
W2 sold its shuttered 10-million-gallon-per-year biodiesel plant in Crawfordsville, Iowa, in November 2024.
Adapted from an article originally shared by OPIS. Image Credit: Groen Solutions LLC.
Notice: The Michigan Advanced Biofuels Coalition (MiABC) does not lobby or influence policy in any way. The policy interests of Michigan soybean farmers and biodiesel producers are supported by the Michigan Soybean Association and Clean Fuels Alliance America, respectively. This post is shared for educational purposes only.