The US-UK trade pact, agreed in May, removed a 19% tariff on ethanol imported from the US up to a quota of 1.4bn litres. That is approximately equivalent to the current size of the UK market.<\/p>\n
The firms have previously said the trade agreement had made their businesses “commercially unviable”.<\/p>\n
Vivergo said it had presented the government with a plan to return the firm to profitability.<\/p>\n
“In making this decision, the government has thrown away billions in potential growth in the Humber, a sovereign capability in clean fuels that had the chance to lead the world.”<\/p>\n
It said jobs in clean energy would now move overseas.<\/p>\n
“This plant should always have been profitable under the right regulatory environment, as similar plants in Western Europe demonstrate,” the firm said.<\/p>\n
German-owned Ensus has also been approached for comment.<\/p>\n
The two plants employ 270 people, but their closure could affect thousands more in the supply chain.<\/p>\n
A government spokesperson said after working with the companies over weeks to understand “the financial challenges they have faced over the past decade”, the government had taken the difficult decision not to offer direct funding “as it would not provide value for the taxpayer or solve the long-term problems the industry faces”.<\/p>\n
The government said it recognised this was a “difficult time for the workers and their families” and said it would work with trade unions, local partners and the companies to support those affected.<\/p>\n
Bioethanol, a fuel made from wheat, corn or sugar beet, is added to fuels such as E10 petrol in the UK.<\/p>\n
Sources within the industry said that government delays over the migration to petrol with higher bioethanol content had hurt the industry.<\/p>\n
The government has previously said that by 2030, it wants 10% of all fuel used in planes to come from sustainable sources, one of which is bioethanol.<\/p>\n
The bioethanol industry buys thousands of tonnes of wheat from UK farms, and Ensus also produces 30% of the UK’s commercial carbon dioxide \u2013 used in soft drinks, medical and nuclear industries.<\/p>\n
The government said it would continue to work on measures to ensure the resilience of the CO2 supply chain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US-UK trade pact, agreed in May, removed a 19% tariff on ethanol imported from the US up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-346548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115032844078846092","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}