Fortum, a €11.7 billion ($15.2 billion) Finnish energy company serving the Nordic markets, is building a biodiesel plant at its Porvoo oil refinery.

The plant, which is due to come online in the summer of 2007, will have an annual capacity of approximately 170,000 tons of biodiesel—roughly 3,500 barrels per day.

Fortum’s existing diesel fuel production capacity at Porvoo is four million tons a year—approximately 85,000 barrels per day.

We are the first oil company to successfully develop a biodiesel production process and to build significant capacity for it. We are ahead of our competitors and, once the plant is in operation, we will be able to produce considerably better biodiesel products than are currently produced by other manufacturers. In recent emission tests carried out by two leading heavy duty automobile manufacturers, our new biodiesel proved to be the best.

—Kimmo Rahkamo, President, Components, Fortum Oil

There is currently no significant commercial biodiesel production in Finland, according to the European Biodiesel Board. An output of 170,000 tons would catapult Finland into fourth place in Europe behind the 2004 production capacities of Germany, France and Italy.

The European Union has set a biofuels target of 5.75% of total gasoline and diesel consumption (energy content) by 2010.