Official inauguration of Europe’s largest biodiesel plant

Lurgi AG built Europe’s largest biodiesel plant in Piesteritz, Saxony-Anhalt for its client GATE GmbH. The official inauguration ceremony marking the start-up of the plant was held on Friday in the presence of Professor Dr.
Wolfgang Böhmer, Minister President of Saxony-Anhalt. The event was opened by Dieter Heisig, CEO of GATE GmbH. Among the guests attending the event were also the Minister for Economics and Labor of Saxony-Anhalt, Dr. Reiner Haseloff, the lord mayor of Wittenberg, Eckhard Naumann, as well as representatives of Lurgi AG.

The turnkey biodiesel plant designed and built by Lurgi AG for GATE GmbH’s Renewables Wittenberg plant will in future produce more than 200,000 tons of biodiesel from rapeseed, 20,000 tons of pharmaceutical grade glycerin and 300,000 tons of colza meal per year. This plant is the first complete plant in Germany involving all steps from seed admission via seed treatment to pre-pressing and extraction through to raw oil treatment,
i.e. biodiesel generation. Lurgi supplied the complete equipment as well as all utilities and was in addition also in charge of plant commissioning and training of the client’s operators.

In view of the climatic change it is becoming increasingly more important to save existing resources by using biofuels and to reduce CO2 emissions. In Germany, the production capacities for biodiesel already amount to around 4 million tons of biodiesel per year. These 4 million tons of biodiesel reduce CO2 emissions in Germany by 10 million tons. Every liter of biodiesel that replaces a liter of fossil diesel contributes to abating the greenhouse effect. Neckermann Renewables Wittenberg GmbH belongs to Global Alternative Energy GmbH (GATE), which is owned by Fortune Management (65%) and the Neckermann family (35%).