India's First Sustainable Aviation Fuel Plant to Start Production by Year-End

The country's largest refiner and fuel retailer, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), expects to start producing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) on a commercial scale at its Panipat refinery by December, following recent international certification received by the unit for manufacturing the biofuel from used cooking oil, according to energy major's chairman Arvinder Singh Sahney.

- SUKALP SHARMA

By the end of this calendar year, IOC will have the capacity to produce 35,000 tonnes per year of SAF from used cooking oil, which will be sourced from large hotel chains, restaurants, and sweets and snacks majors like Haldiram's, which normally discard cooking oil after single use.

"The capacity (35,000 tonnes per year) will be sufficient to meet the country's 1 percent SAF blending requirement (for international flights) by 2027. For feedstock (used cooking oil), we will be engaging aggregators to collect it from big hotel chains and restaurants. There is a large amount of such oil available in the country. The only challenge is collection. While it is easy to collect from large hotel chains, a solution needs to be found for collection from small users, including households," Sahney said.

Earlier this week, IOC became the first company in India to receive the ISCC CORSIA certification for SAF production at its Panipat refinery in Haryana. ISCC CORSIA is a certification system for compliance with the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) criteria for SAF. It is a prerequisite for commercial SAF production.