Universal Biofuels wins biodiesel supply contract for public buses in Andhra Pradesh

The Universal Biofuels plant in India (Photo: Aemetis Inc.)

Aemetis Inc. announced in mid-March that its Universal Biofuels subsidiary located in the Andhra Pradesh state of India was selected by the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corp. to supply approximately 800,000 gallons per month of biodiesel to fuel public transport buses in the region. The arrangement is expected to be ongoing to meet the needs of APSRTC. The state of Andhra Pradesh has a population of 84 million people, including approximately 28,000 villages.

“After an initial ramp-up period, revenues from the APSRTC supply agreement are expected to be about 20 percent of our plant capacity generating $36 million per year including glycerin byproducts, for a total of $180 million under the recently announced Aemetis Five Year Plan,” said Eric McAfee, chairman and CEO of Aemetis. “We built our 50 million gallon per year capacity biodiesel plant in the port city of Kakinada in the state of Andhra Pradesh on the East Coast of India to convert waste from the edible oil industry into high-quality biodiesel. The selection of Universal Biofuels to supply APSRTC is the result of many years of reliably producing a high-quality product and building our reputation as a proven large-scale producer.”

Currently, APSRTC operates 11,522 buses with 423 bus stations, 128 depots and 692 bus shelters. The corporation’s buses connect villages to all major towns and cities in the state of Andhra Pradesh, as well as cities in the neighboring states of Tamilnadu, Karnataka, Odisha, and Telangana.

In 1999, APSRTC entered the Guinness Book of World Records for owning the largest fleet of buses in the world. The supply agreement was arranged after the Aemetis plant was evaluated and approved for quality and production capacity by the APSRTC head of engineering.