Dielacher leaves BDI, Ternegg and Schrems to co-lead company through strategic reframing
Markus Dielacher is leaving BDI-BioEnergy International and his role as CEO of the Austria-based company to pursue other professional goals.
During the strategic reframing and expansion of the company’s business fields, Kurt Ternegg, the CEO of BDI-BioLife Science, and Michael Schrems, former interim chief operations officer of BDI, former IQX Group partner and owner of Schrems Project Consulting, assumed strategic and operative leadership of the company at the beginning of November.
“After having been part of top-level management for 20 years, Markus Dielacher will be looking for new professional challenges,” the company stated Nov. 10 in a press release.
BDI was founded in September 1996 by Wilhelm Hammer and Helmut Gössler. In a Q&A with Dielacher published in the Winter 2022 print edition of Biobased Diesel™, Dielacher explained his early work with BDI’s founders and eventual rise to leading the company.
“More than 25 years ago, I was working together with Wilhelm Hammer and Helmut Gössler at the Austrian company Vogel & Noot,” Dielacher said. “Together we built the first biodiesel plant in the Czech Republic in 1992. Later, after BDI was founded by a management buyout in 1996, I joined BDI and started to work as project and procurement manager. In 2011, after having worked in several other functions with more strategical focus within the company, I was promoted and became a member of the board as chief technical officer within BDI AG. Seven years later, in 2018, the main shareholders decided to delist the company from the stock exchange in Frankfurt. Subsequently, BDI was restructured and I got granted the chance to get in the driver seat and take over as CEO to further develop BDI.”
The company has built dozens of biodiesel plants across the world, including most recently in Hungary, Belgium and the U.S. using its RepCat process technology, which allows conversion of the lowest-quality feedstock into high-quality biodiesel with help from a recyclable catalyst.
BDI continues to offer innovative biodiesel plant builds and technologies but the company has also broadened its services to include renewable diesel pretreatment and biogas technology, which BDI said its offering has recently been enlarged, as well as algae cultivation, phosphorus recovery from sewage sludge, plastic recycling into pyrolysis oil and more through its GreenTech Solutions platform.
Based on BDI’s in-house developed fermentation technology, a large biogas plant—what BDI said is the world’s largest—was established in 2015 for the brewery Göss, which is part of the Heineken group. By using malt spent grains directly from the brewery, its production became carbon neutral and the plant achieved independence from fossil fuels. Furthermore, the digested residue can be sold regionally to farmers as high-quality, certified fertilizer.
Dielacher shared news of his departure originally on the social-media outlet LinkedIn Nov. 8.
“After 25 exciting, challenging and successful years at BDI, I have decided to move on to the next stage of my career and to open up a new chapter in the book of my professional life,” he stated. “I leave behind great colleagues, supporting shareholders Helmut Gössler and Wilhelm Hammer, amazing customers and a fantastic team who all shaped me professionally as well as personally. I take with me wonderful memories of having accompanied the building of more than 30 biofuel plants, working with numerous customers around the globe and the amazing feeling to have contributed something positive to the environment. I am excited to venture out into new places to learn new things. Curious? Stay tuned, I will keep you updated. Great thanks to the wonderful BDI team for the fantastic experience and all the best for the future!”
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