My company, Homestead Inc. and CoopPlus of Western Massachusetts are launching a community biodiesel production system this summer in Western Massachusetts. This is a 500,000 gallon per year biorefinery, based 100% of the collection and conversion of local community waste grease resources (WVO), and intending to produce the ASTM certified fuel, EPA registered, for the local diesel users. I, as the entrepreneur, have been producing biodiesel for the past 6 years, 3 years commercially, until last fall. Since then I have been full time engaged in the development of a comprehensive business plan and engineering design for this small scale commercial operation. In case you are wondering, the capital, interest, operating costs and startup funds come to $1.7 million. I hope to get going very, very soon, but this plan is not only my process, and involves an energy cooperative with 1400 members, and must be done by the usual drawn out administrative actions. I hope to be actually under comprehensive development by October of this year, and have the first production for testing purposes by this time next year.
The largest hurdle of a realistic business plan is the marketing of the product. Biodiesel is not a fully tested market, and is still growing nationally by 40% per year (DOE estimate). However, bankers do not want to look at optimistic projections, but demonstrable proofs about guaranteed cash flow. Towards this end I have been working on several standard processes for undeniable methods of selling this modest amount of product. Perhaps its is time to look at some more innovative methods of selling biodiesel. I wonder if there is potential for a fuel supply process that is roughly parallel to Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Would people spend money in advance to be guaranteed a year's supply of biodiesel, appropriately manufactured and delivered, and in return provide a guaranteed cash flow? It would be a simple matter to calculate a reasonable price for the fuel, and the delivery issue would be a combination of trucking, storage containers, pump systems, training and handholding. My belief is that this concept may become more valuable when people suddenly come to realize that it is the end of cheap oil. I'm sure others have commented on this in the past, but searching the records is not my strong suit. Anyone believe this would not be a successful business model? Tom Leue ----------------------------- Homestead Inc. www.yellowbiodiesel.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
