Climate ideal for growing Carinata for airlines’ use, says biosciences firm

Scottish farmers could be among the major beneficiaries of plans by a Canadian biofuels innovator to develop an oilseed/mustard-like crop into a 40 million-acre jet-fuel resource.

The crop is called Carinata and, according to Quebec-based developer Agrisoma Biosciences, it has the potential to provide the world’s airlines with half their annual jet fuel requirements within the next 10 years.

The good news for Scottish farmers is that Steven Fabijanski, Agrisoma’s CEO, believes Scotland has an ideal climate for growing Carinata, which also yields animal feed as a by-product from its jet-fuel crushing process.

“Scaling up to 40m acres will obviously take time, maybe 10 years, but we’re confident that the growing base around the world is available and we’re starting to gather the necessary momentum to make this happen,” said Mr Fabijanski.

The Quebec company has been working with Carinata for the past five years, so far building a global production base of 100,000 acres, basically by doubling plantings each year.

Agrisoma has also partnered with Qantas, participating in the airline’s first Us-to-australia flight to be propelled by a blend of traditional jet fuel and Carinata oil.

That was in January this year, since when Qantas has been working with Agrisoma in Australia, helping to establish a production and processing value chain in the country.

The plan is that Oz farmers will be planting close to one million acres of Carinata over the next few years. That would be enough to produce more than 200 million litres of biofuel a year, equivalent to around 50% of Qantas’ annual jet fuel requirements.

“During the past 12 months we’ve effectively transitioned from working with the crop as a demonstration model to the beginnings of our achieving genuine commercial scale,” said Mr Fabijanski.

He added that the strength of interest globally in Carinata is such that Agrisoma has already attracted $12 million of venture capital funding, with more in the pipeline.

“We’ve also expanded our growing area geographically, achieving very significant advances for the crop around the world,” he said.

This included carrying out a first oil crush demonstration project in Europe earlier this year, in preparation for production trials to begin next year in southern France, south-east Spain and possibly Italy.

Agrisoma says that Carinata should be viewed by farmers as a second cash crop to be grown on land that wouldn’t normally be able to support a second cropping option.

It also fits into demanding weather windows for growers, sitting neatly between the end of one primary crop season and another.

“While suitable for growing in challenging locations, or at difficult times of the year when water and high temperature issues make food crop production impossible, Carinata also performs well on marginal land in cool and wet climates with a relatively mild winter, such as Scotland and New Zealand,” said Mr Fabijanski.

“Setting our global target at 40m acres is pretty aggressive, of course. We’ve certainly made a good start, however, with South America, Australia and Europe all now either in development or being solidly in focus for the future.”