From the The Observer  - Sunday July 1, 2007

Do you want to slash your fuel bill? For some diesel car owners, it’s now possible. In a quiet shift in policy, the government has relaxed the rules on using vegetable oil, which many diesel cars - including some modern models - can run on.

Previously, anyone who ran a diesel car on vegetable oil was liable to pay duty, but from today - 1 July - this tax has been slashed, provided you don’t use more than 2,500 litres annually.

A car owner who averages 40 miles a gallon on diesel can now drive nearly 22,000 miles a year on vegetable oil before having to stump up any tax. If the driver’s average is closer to 50mpg, this allowance goes up to more than 27,000 miles a year.

Tempted? Some will be, especially if they run older models of diesel, which are easier to convert, though modern cars, such as the Ford Focus TDCi and VW Golf TDI, can also be adapted.

Mike Lawton runs Regenatec, an Oxfordshire-based company that converts a wide range of commercial and ordinary diesel vehicles. ‘Typically a fully fitted veg oil conversion will cost a bit over £1,000, including VAT,’ Lawton says. ‘That’s for an older diesel car. For a modern version you’ll need to pay around £100 extra.’

And if you’re handy at DIY, Regenatec is ready to sell you a ’smartveg’ kit for £600, though you’ll need to spend a solid weekend doing the conversion, he warns.

But is a kit necessary? ‘It can be very difficult to start a car from cold using veg oil, especially in winter,’ he warns. ‘It’s too thick and gloopy; it needs to warm up. Our kit uses diesel to power the car for the first few minutes, then it automatically switches over to veg oil. You need to flush the engine through with diesel at the end of the day after using the car, but only for about 60-90 seconds.’

Lawton reckons that for someone with a modern diesel averaging 45mpg and covering 15,000 miles a year, the £1,100 or so spent on a fitted conversion will pay for itself in less than 18 months. From then on - provided the government doesn’t mess with the tax threshold - you’ve running on dirt-cheap, though planet-friendly, biofuel.

Potentially, you can kiss goodbye to fuel station forecourts for ever, powering your car for free, if you’re intrepid enough to use second-hand vegetable oil and are on good terms with your local pub or chippy.

Chip fat, however, does need to be filtered, otherwise you could find you’ve got rancid pieces of old kebab or fried egg clogging up the fuel pump - fatal for your car and pocket. To do this you must register as a waste carrier with the Environment Agency - go to www.netregs.gov.uk/netregs/sectors/287956/628713/ then scroll down to Waste Carriers and Brokers Application Form.

One motorist who saved himself the expense of a conversion is Kenny Tucker, who recently bought a 1989 Mercedes-Benz 190 diesel 2.5 for just £200 off eBay. Currently using a mix of Costco soya oil and Morrison’s rapeseed oil to power his Benz, Tucker is planning a 3,000-mile drive across Europe this summer to publicise vegetable oil’s economy and ‘greenness’ - provided he can persuade restaurants en route to offload their old cooking fat.

‘The car is very strong. I’m averaging 40mpg. We’ve actually turned it into a company car; whenever we do a big trip we take the veggie Merc. It’s comfy, rugged, green - and cheap,’ he says.

Medicinal research chemist James Jenkins, however, took something of a risk when converting his 1998 Peugeot 206 1.9 diesel in October 2004. It was a leap of faith initially as the fuel pump in his Peugeot - a Lucas unit - is not considered as robust as the Bosch units many older German cars such as VWs and Mercedes use.

Nevertheless, Jenkins spent £600 on a DIY kit from Regenatec, which, with some help from the garage, took a day to fit. Since then he has covered 40,000 trouble-free miles, doing about 300 miles a week.

And the best bit? The fuel cost has been almost zero, since his Pug is powered by vegetable oil from a local pub, the Fox, in Steventon, Oxfordshire. ‘Getting rid of their old fat is often a problem for pubs. So as long as I’m regular and prompt, I have it free. Pubs often have to pay for it to be removed anyway.’

He drains the oil into a 55-gallon drum at home, equipped with two filters. He could buy an electric pump but funnelling it in is straightforward enough. ‘It’s not like filling up at Tesco,’ Jenkins says, ‘but I’m confident of my methodology. I did a lot of research before going for it.’

www.vegetableoildiesel.co.uk/forum/

http://www.regenatec.com/

http://www.carbon-neutral-car.com/

www.hmrc.gov.uk/briefs/excise-duty/brief4307.htm

Yes, it’s true, our busy modern lifestyles are having an effect on all of these environmental changes that are taking place but what can we do on an individual level? Well the answer could be literally staring you in the face, yes, the vegetable oils used to cook the fish and chips that you might have enjoyed in the hotel bar today will be used to power vehicles up and down the country.

This is thanks to a new green initiative from Frylite, who in association with Queens University in Belfast will use the waste oil they collect from thousands of catering establishments across Ireland (including the Carlton Group of Hotels) and convert it in to bio diesel, a clean, green renewable fuel.

Speaking about the bio diesel project Eamon McCay, Managing Director for Frylite went on to explain, “bio diesel has many key advantages over traditional fossil fuels as it help reduce carbon emissions which are leading to global warming as well as reducing  dangerous tailpipe emissions which are clogging up our streets in towns and cities across Ireland. Before we decided to develop the bio diesel plant we were shipping these waste oils overseas and they were being used to produce bio diesel which is in common use throughout Europe. Having examined various alternatives the logical progression was to use the million of litres of waste oil that we collect throughout Ireland every year and put it to better use to clean up our own towns and cities.”

What started as a simple business idea has now become a reality and before building a full scale plant next to the company’s headquarters in Strabane, Frylite will initially run a pilot project producing around 160,000 litres a month. Speaking about further developments Eamon went on to conclude “we’re currently in discussions with a variety of local authorities and expect to sell volume quantities of bio diesel to a number of councils throughout Northern Ireland who will use it to power their fleets of vehicles. After the pilot project, the sky’s the limit and we plan to upscale production and roll out the bio diesel business throughout Ireland so that all towns from Mizen head to Malin Head can enjoy the benefits of this new fuel of the future”

For further information about Frylite’s biodiesel plans please contact Jonathan McLaughlin, Frylite’s Group Marketing Manager on 048 71 383133.

Operating from its Strabane base, Frylite, who supply a range of fresh vegetable oils and collects and disposes of their customers used cooking oils for free, have continued to expand at a phenomenal rate opening no less than four new facilities in Coleraine, Galway, Dublin and now Cork over the past two years.

The opening of this new facility clearly marks a significant development in the company’s history in that they are now able to offer their unique service package on a nationwide basis to a new range of customers in various regions throughout the country.

Customers currently using Frylite’s free delivery and collection service vary in size from independent operators to national chains and include pubs, restaurants, hotels, fast food operators, major food processors and food service companies.

Explaining the new developments the company’s Managing Director, Eamon McCay, went on to explain we’ve come a long way over the past twenty years and have invested heavily in our infrastructure to allow us to meet customer demand which has been growing year on year. The announcement of the new facility in Cork enables us to better capitalise on an increased confidence and buoyancy within the Irish economy which has resulted in the creation of numerous new restaurants and eateries across the country. In addition to this, it is also a response to existing customers (operating on a national basis) who wanted to know when we’d be able to roll out our business model and service offering to their sites in other parts of the country.

Having successfully established ourselves in both the Galway and Dublin markets it was only a matter of time before we decided to move the business even further south” What sets Frylite apart from more traditional operators in the markets is that in addition to the supply, collection and disposal service which is the core offering of the company they are also able to offer their customers a range of added benefits which other suppliers find difficult to match. These include free supply and associated with more traditional operators and the peace of mind that a customer gets from knowing that Frylite are fully licensed by relevant authorities throughout the island of Ireland to collect and dispose of their customers waste in an environmentally friendly manner. Given that so much has happened in the company in such a short space of time one would wonder what plans Frylite has for the future.
The future looks bright for Frylite and not content with resting on their laurels Frylite clearly have their eyes fixed on the future and Managing Director Eamon McCay finally went on to add we’ve ambitious plans for the future which include consolidating upon the growth we’ve achieved and continuing to look after our customers in a highly professional and responsive manner. To ensure we continue to exceed expectations, we’re planning to add new a new range of specialty and olive oils to product portfolio and we’re also evaluating opportunities to make biodiesel in a new purpose built processing plant next to our new state of the art head office in Strabane”.

Original Article published in the Sunday Tribune - Business Section
Author: Conor Brophy

OUT of the frying pan, into the petrol pump is the business model behind a new biofuel venture planned by (Tyrone-based cooking oil supplier Frylite. Frylite, which supplies vegetable-based cooking oils to over 7,000 Irish customers and collects waste oil which has been used in food preparation, is to build a waste oil processing plant at its headquarters in Strabane.

Frylite marketing manager Jonathan McLaughlin said the facility would be used to process some 26,000 liters of waste oil that the company collects every week and convert it into biofuel.

The waste oil is currently being sent to processing plants in Europe, chiefly in the Netherlands. McLaughlin said Frylite had decided to invest over £1m (€1.5m) to build its own facility because it was conscious of the environmental impact of transporting the oil to be processed. The company also believes the demand for biofuels is growing to the point where a processing plant makes economic sense both because of the volume of oil Frylite is collecting and what McLaughlin said was a “growing market in Ireland for these fuels”

Founded in 1988 by local businessman Eamon McCay McLaughlin said Frylite is now the largest supplier of vegetable oils such as rape- seed and soyabean oil to the catering industry in Ireland. Hotels, restaurants and fast- food chains including Abrakababra use its oils for cooking. The company is well placed to benefit from demand for healthier oils and cooking products that do not produce harmful trans fats, according to McLaughlin.

Trans fats, harmful fats found in food cooked with hydrogenated oil, have become something of a cause celebre in the food Industry of late. New York City Health Board’s decision, due to be voted on next month, to introduce regulations banning the city’s restaurants from serving food containing trans fats has sparked an all-out trans fat war.

Other US and European cities such as Chicago and Paris are set to follow the NY example and Disney recently announced a ban on trans fats at its theme packs across the globe.

“For those hydrogenated oils, particularly with the health concerns, there is not much of a future,” said McLaughlin. Frylite stands to benefit from the fall-out as caterers look to healthier, natural oils to replace the processed, hydrogenated alternatives. “Certainly at the moment it’s in vogue,” McLaughlin said.

Tyrone-based Frylite is to build a processing plant to convert waste oil to biofuel

Frylite recently opened its eighth Irish depot, in Cork, providing it with its first distribution site in Munster. The Cork site joins a network including Strabane, Coleraine, Dublin and Galway. McLaughlin reckons the company’s nationwide delivery fleet is now no more than an hour and a half’s drive away from any business in the country.

Growth in Frylite’s business has been fuelled during the 1990s and early part of this decade by the explosion in the number of hotels and restaurants in the country. “We’ve been lucky enough to benefit from the growth in the catering industry,” McLaughlin said.

The next wave of growth, however is likely to come from Britain which he described as “a natural expansion” for Frylite. It will open its first distribution centre in Britain within the next year McLaughlin said.

A biofuel processing plant makes sense both because of the volume of oil Frylite is collecting and what McLaughlin said was a ‘growing market in Ireland farthest fuels’

The company not only supplies a range of fresh vegetable oils but they collect and dispose of their customers used cooking oils for free.

The opening of this new facility clearly marks a significant development in Frylite’s history, they are now able to offer their unique service package on a nation wide basis to a new rage of customers in various regions throughout the country.

Customers currently using Frylite’s free delivery and collection service vary in size from independent operators to national chains and include pubs, restaurants, hotels, fast food operators, major food processors and food service companies.

Frylite’s managing director, Eamon McCay said: “We’ve come along way over the past 20 years and have invested heavily in our infrastructure to allow us to meet customer demand which has been growing year on year.

“The announcement of the new facility in Cork enables us to better capitalise on an increased confidence and buoyancy within the Irish economy which has resulted in the creation of numerous new restaurants and eateries across the country.

“In addition to this it is also a response to existing customers (operating on a national basis) who wanted to know when we’d be able to roll out our business model and service offering to their sites in other parts of the country.

“Having successfully established ourselves in both the Galway and Dublin markets it was only a matter of time before we decided to move the business even further south.”

In addition to the supply, collection and disposal service which, is the core offering of the company they are also able to offer their customers a range of added benefits which other suppliers find difficult to match.

“These include free supply and maintenance of equipment, the elimination of expensive disposal and packaging costs associated with more traditional operators and the peace of mind that a customer gets from knowing that Frylite are fully licensed by relevant authorities throughout the island of Ireland to collect and dispose of their customers waste in an environmentally friendly manner. And there are big plans for the Frylite’s future.