The April group begins to distribute, for the truck market, a diesel fuel manufactured solely from rapeseed.
April, the industrial group of the French oilseed industry, presented, Thursday, November 8, 2018, the launch of a diesel fuel made only from rapeseed. Its market: the trucks of the professional carriers, the buses and the coaches of the communities.
Oleo 100
Last March, the government gave the green light to the marketing of a fuel ester (biodiesel produced from vegetable oil) in pure form in the engines, and no longer just mixed in diesel. Since then, April has started producing this fuel, called Oléo 100. "Oléo" as "oleaginous", and "100" as "100%".
This renewable fuel is currently produced only at Avril's biodiesel plant in Grand-Couronne, Rouen. But as the Oléo 100 grows, the other factories of the group will be there: those of Montoir-de-Bretagne (Loire-Atlantique), Bordeaux and Sète.
excess
But will France have enough rapeseed to roll all these trucks and buses? "We will be able to produce volumes, because we are largely in surplus," says Arnaud Rousseau, president of the Avril group and oilseed producer in Seine-et-Marne.
April plans to produce "several hundred thousand tons" of this rapeseed methyl ester annually. Hardly enough to run the April plants at full capacity, under-capacity since the competition of biodiesel from Argentina and Malaysia. Despite this year's drought, which has cut the French rapeseed crop by a third, the quantities of seeds will be sufficient, he confirms.
Greenhouse effect
As for the price of this pure biodiesel for carriers and communities, it is the same as that of fossil diesel, says Jean-Philippe Puig, director general of Avril. "It does not change anything for the user", because for the same price it does not have to make the possible adjustments of vehicles that will be supported by Avril. But "it changes everything" because it reduces the greenhouse effect and the emission of particles, and can include these benefits in its CSR (corporate social responsibility).