A soybean crusher and biodiesel processor in Quebec’s Eastern Townships will get in on the tail-end of funding from a federal biofuels incentive program.
Biocardel Quebec, based at Richmond, north of Sherbrooke, will get up to $18.79 million over seven years from the federal ecoEnergy for Biofuels program, Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis announced earlier this week.
The company, which crushes soybeans for feed-grade meal and biodiesel-grade soy oil, has put up a separate biodiesel plant on its property to make ASTM-grade biodiesel for transport, off-road and heating fuel, as well as glycerol for heating.
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The funded project consists of converting vegetable or cooking oil or animal fat into biodiesel, which Biocardel then plans to market to diesel producers in Quebec, the Atlantic provinces and “possibly” the U.S.
According to the company’s website, it also plans to open a similar plant in Luxembourg sometime next year, expected to produce about the same volume of biodiesel as the Richmond project — about 40 million litres per year, the federal government said in its release Tuesday.
Company president Rene Delarue noted the company is also undertaking research and development work in “algae-biofuels and recovery of byproducts.”
The ecoEnergy program, budgeted for up to $1.5 billion over nine years, accepted applications from new and existing biofuel producers until the end of March this year.
The government in December 2009 announced changes to the program’s parameters, in which it planned to look first to commit the remaining funds to existing producers who would be in production by March 31 and met all program requirements.
Funds not allocated to existing producers by the March 31 deadline were to then be used to support the highest-ranked projects from new producers who were able to successfully show an “advanced state of readiness” by the application deadline.
After the changes were announced to the program last December, it received a total of 68 applications from “existing” and “new” producers. As of Aug. 1, apart from those applications that were withdrawn or deemed incomplete or ineligible, eight existing producers have been deemed eligible; three more decisions on existing producers’ projects are pending.
Plus, 14 new producers are deemed to have shown their “advanced state of readiness,” with 20 more decisions on state of readiness pending.
