Aemetis Completes Expansion of India Biodiesel Plant One Year Ahead of Schedule, Increases Annual Production Capacity to 60 Million Gallons

Increase in capacity was internally funded by positive cash flow from India operations; Aemetis Five Year Plan targets 100 mgy capacity by year 2025

CUPERTINO, CA, Sept. 06, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire - Aemetis, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMTX), a renewable natural gas and renewable fuels company focused on negative carbon intensity products, announced today that the company’s Universal Biofuels subsidiary has completed an expansion of its India biodiesel plant annual production capacity to 60 million gallons more than one year ahead of schedule, supplying the expanding demand for biodiesel by India government-owned Oil Marketing Companies (OMC’s). 

The Aemetis Five Year Plan describes an increase from 50 million gallons per year (MGY) to 100 MGY of biodiesel production capacity at the India plant to be completed by year 2025.  Additional capital projects to increase the production capacity at the Kakinada, India biodiesel plant to 80 MGY are in process for completion in the first half of 2024, also ahead of schedule.

“The market for biodiesel in India continues to expand as OMC’s increase the number of blending locations and the percentage of biofuel blended into diesel,” stated Sanjeev Gupta, President of Aemetis International.  “The Kakinada plant has expanded production by completing upgrades to de-bottleneck the plant, and the next phase will add additional process equipment to increase capacity.  When production capacity reaches 100 million gallons per year, the India business will be able to generate more than $500 million per year of revenues,” Gupta added.

“Aemetis continues to demonstrate our ability to design, engineer, permit, construct and operate renewable fuels production facilities, then continually improve the energy efficiency, feedstocks, and other carbon intensive components of operations to improve financial margins by reducing costs and increasing revenues,” said Eric McAfee, Chairman and CEO of Aemetis.  “The US ethanol business is doing relatively well due to low feedstock and natural gas costs, and our India biodiesel business continues to perform very well while increasing production capacity without incurring debt.  We see our focus on reducing the carbon intensity of our renewable fuels as an expanding competitive advantage compared to petroleum fuels.”

Built by Aemetis near the eastern India port of Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh, the Universal Biofuels plant is the largest biodiesel production facility in India.  Expanded biodiesel production supports the Indian government’s goal of a 5% biodiesel blend equal to approximately 1.25 billion gallons per year which was established in the 2022 National Biofuels Policy.

India consumes about 25 billion gallons per year of diesel, but India does not have a meaningful amount of domestic oil production and is dependent on imported crude oil to supply its petroleum refineries.  The adoption of a 5% biodiesel blend target by the India government is expected to reduce the amount of petroleum imported into India, reduce the export of dollars to purchase crude oil, strengthen domestic agricultural producers and processors, and significantly improve air quality while reducing carbon pollution. 

Petroleum diesel emissions are a significant contributor to poor air quality and health issues in India.  According to the Public Health Foundation of India, air pollution causes more than $36 billion of economic losses each year and about one of every six deaths in India are caused by air pollution.

Biodiesel used in heavy transportation reduces particulate emissions by more than 90% compared to petroleum diesel and creates domestic demand in India for agricultural feedstocks and waste byproducts to supply renewable fuel production facilities.  Biodiesel produced from waste feedstocks reduces carbon pollution by up to 80% compared to petroleum diesel, directly reducing the emission of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

About Aemetis

Headquartered in Cupertino, California, Aemetis is a renewable natural gas, renewable fuel and biochemicals company focused on the acquisition, development and commercialization of innovative technologies that replace petroleum-based products and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Founded in 2006, Aemetis is expanding a California biogas digester network and pipeline system to convert dairy waste gas into Renewable Natural Gas. Aemetis owns and operates a 65 million gallon per year ethanol production facility in California’s Central Valley near Modesto that supplies about 80 dairies with animal feed. Aemetis also owns and operates a 50 million gallon per year production facility on the East Coast of India producing high quality distilled biodiesel and refined glycerin for customers in India and Europe.  Aemetis is developing the Carbon Zero sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel fuel biorefineries in California to utilize distillers corn oil and other renewable oils to produce low carbon intensity renewable jet and diesel fuel using cellulosic hydrogen from waste orchard and forest wood, while pre-extracting cellulosic sugars from the waste wood to be processed into high value cellulosic ethanol at the Keyes plant. Aemetis holds a portfolio of patents and exclusive technology licenses to produce renewable fuels and biochemicals.  For additional information about Aemetis, please visit www.aemetis.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This news release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding assumptions, projections, expectations, targets, intentions or beliefs about future events or other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements in this news release include, without limitation, statements related to the operation of and expected revenues from the biodiesel plant in India, our compliance with governmental programs, our ability to expand production capacity, our ability to attract government contracts, and our ability to access markets and funding to execute our business plan.  Words or phrases such as “anticipates,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “believes,” “estimates,” “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “predicts,” “projects,” “showing signs,” “targets,” “view,” “will likely result,” “will continue” or similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on current assumptions and predictions and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties.  Actual results or events could differ materially from those set forth or implied by such forward-looking statements and related assumptions due to certain factors, including, without limitation, competition in the ethanol, biodiesel and other industries in which we operate, commodity market risks including those that may result from current weather conditions, financial market risks, customer adoption, counter-party risks, risks associated with changes to federal policy or regulation, and other risks detailed in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022 and in our subsequent filings with the SEC.  We are not obligated, and do not intend, to update any of these forward-looking statements at any time unless an update is required by applicable securities laws.

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