GHP Biodiesel is a German based manufacturer of mid-sized bio-diesel installations.

In 2002, GHP started out as a producer of bio-diesel in the German market. With its daily experience and feedback, GHP started out expanding and improving its technology, increasing its capacity and sophistication. As GHP Biodiesel built its learning curve over time, the management realized that its deep understanding of the bio-diesel market and the operations of a producing company has helped built a technology platform which was attractive to other parties. In 2006, GHP Biodiesel decided to make the move towards technology provider bringing its knowledge and experience to its partners.

The cornerstones of GHPs technology are based on:

• Simple and robust technology, which offers best economics at reasonable investment.
• Standardization of a 30.000 tons p.a. installation in a modular configuration, which allows for easy multiplication.
• Containerized, pre-assembled and pre-tested equipment, which allows for minimum set-up times.
• Multifeed works with vegetable oils, used cooking oil or animal fats for highest flexibility in operations.
• Very limited manpower required for plant operation, to ensure best economics.

GHP Biodiesel is convinced that the future of Biodiesel lies in midsized projects which are based on proximity to feedstock and customers. Buy Local, sell local is the paradigm for such a project, ensuring sustainability through the integration of local feedstock supplies and the local bio-diesel market! Modularity is another key work in GHPs concept, meaning that once the market is build for a base volume a project should take the next step, grow to the next level only if the market can sustain long-term.

Still such a project needs to be economically viable to ensure its long-term success and this is possible if it is founded on both reasonable investments cost and lowest operational costs possible. The latter can be achieved through a technology which is truly multifeed, robust, and optimized for low-cost production.

Speaker Profile
Gerald Schwaiger has more the 20 years of working experience, mostly in General Management, Marketing and Sales functions, both in a Geman and international environment.

At GHP Biodiesel, which started out as a producer of bio-diesel in 2002 in the – then buoyant – German biofuels market, he had the opportunity to truly understand the economical, technical and organizational challenges a bio-diesel producer is facing.

This day- to day knowledge and experience was taken and implemented into GHPs own technology and had to prove itself in daily operations. Out of this continuous refining process GHP developed their technological- economical approach to bio-diesel production, which allows being successful in a young and fast changing environment.

Gerald successfully repositioned GHP Biodiesel from a mid- sized producer of bio-diesel in Germany to a manufacturer of bio-diesel installations operating for a global market.

JatrophaWorld 2008 Miami Speaker
Day 2 : Wednesday, June 11
14:35 IDENTIFYING COST EFFECTIVE JME PRODUCTION
Economics & Technologies
For start-ups to mid-sized projects

Overview of Presentation
Today many of the newly planned bio-diesel projects are built upon an industrial paradigm trying to capture economies of scale and leading to projects with > 100.000 tons of annual capacity and far above. While this industrial paradigm definitely offers some economies with regards to invested capital per ton capacity this brings other challenges to a project. Firstly, feedstock supply needs to be guaranteed: as a capacity of 100.000 tons and more can hardly be secured locally, these projects are forced to move away from a local market or feedstock source to logistically privileged locations like harbours. Here they become dependent on imported feedstock or feedstock ferried in from a huge area. Secondly, an industrial-sized capacity often overstretches the local bio-diesel market and – again becomes dependent on export markets (and subsidies!) or strong mineral oil partners for the blending market. Thirdly, the logistics required in such a set-up lead to enormous complexities and cost and often enough result in devastating sustainability scores.

In this presentation you will learn about a different approach which is focused on a Buy Local, Sell Local paradigm. Feeding a project from local feedstock sources ensures the best long term sustainability and often offers the best service to a community. This becomes even more important when talking about a feedstock where volumes are about being developed and not available as of day 1 in abundant quantities. Additionally, mid-sized volumes can be better digested in a local bio-diesel market, avoiding the detrimental effect of global logistics. Decentralized resources allow keeping operations lean and simple. But for such an approach to be successful in the long run it needs to cost- competitive vs. other projects! Here you are going to hear what to look for with regards to acceptable investment cost, manpower requirements, scaling of a project, technical approaches and much more!

JatrophaWorld 2008 is a showcase of all the latest trends and shifts occurring in the Jatropha value chain, bringing together on a single platform, the best expertise to discuss and analyze the present and future dynamics of Jatropha from a technological and socio-economic angle. To find more about JatrophaWorld in Miami on June 9 to 11, 2008, please visit http://www.futureenergyevents.com/jatropha/.