Biofuel bonus for Aussie Scania fleet

Soil and garden supplies firm Peats Soil has begun producing its own biodiesel, with which it will fuel its impending new fleet of Scania trucks.

Based in Willunga, in South Australia's McLaren Vale region, the company collects 'dirty water' from food manufacturing facilities, from which it then extracts the fat to produce the base stock of the biodiesel.

Peats Soil Managing Director, Peter Wadewitz, says he hopes to produce one million litres of fuel in the first year of production – just 300,000 litres shy of the total he requires to meet his fleet's annual needs.

His first batch of 1000 litres is underway.

"This biodiesel manufacturing concept has been developed in association with Adelaide University and has attracted funding from the Australian Research Council," he says.

"We have now progressed from proving the concept in a laboratory to building a new biodiesel manufacturing facility at our headquarters in Willunga. So far as we know, there is only one other plant like this in the world, in the United States.

"We hope to make one million litres of biodiesel a year, all of which will be consumed by our trucks and the nine loaders we use in the yard to load the trucks with our organic garden products.

"We have ordered 13 new trucks from Scania that will run on 100 per cent biodiesel. These trucks will replace our existing Scania fleet, plus we are adding two more trucks and two more loaders. This means we will be creating four new jobs for drivers plus adding staff for the laboratory."

Scania's Regional Executive Manager in South Australia, Alfons Reitsma, says Peats Soil is at the cutting edge of biodiesel technology.

"We will be supplying Peats Soil with 480hp six-cylinder trucks and some V8-powered 560hp prime movers, which will be used to collect waste matter and then deliver bulk and bagged organic supplies once they have been processed at the plant," he says.

"Scania already produces some of the most fuel-efficient heavy trucks available in Australia, but the switch to biodiesel will make this one of the lowest CO2-emitting fleets in Australia."

Scania says its research has found that biodiesel produces around 80 per cent less CO2 than regular diesel.