BioDieselNow - Renewable biodiesel fuel

I am planning a venture capital backed company in the field of "feedstocks from algae."

One of the key ingredients that venture capital investors are looking for before funding the venture is a list of prospective customers.

If you have a biodiesel or ethanol processing plant of any size at all (even home brew), please send me your name & contact information so that I can put it on the list to show my investors.

If you want to see a new algae production company get started, with the backing of multi-million dollar venture capitalists, then I need your support as prospective customers.

Please ... real replies only.  Both myself & the venture capitalists will do their homework.  We will want to come and visit your site to see that you are a real customer.  So, do this only if you actually have processing equipment and you might be able to use algae based feedstocks, either for ethanol or biodiesel.

Jonathan Gal
Founder & President
New England Clean Fuels, Inc.
d/b/a Texas Clean Fuels
1015 Massachusetts Avenue
Lexington, MA  02420
jlg99@comcast.net
Tel: 781-274-9630

No, that plant never opened (didn't even get built), because the price of feedstock is too high.

So, I have rejiggered my strategy and currently plan to get into the algae growing business using a proprietary technology.

I am looking for a $15 million venture capital investment to get it started.  They are very interested in the idea, but venture investors like to see a list of prospective customers for the product before they invest.

So, I am looking to put together such a list right now.   I will be selling algae-derived oil for biodiesel and algae-derived starch for ethanol.   I will keep the protein to use as fertilizer for growing the next generation of algae.

These biofuel feedstocks will be priced around 20% below the market price of comparable feedstocks (soybean oil & corn).

To clarify, I am probably 9-18 months away from actually producing the stuff for sale.  Right now, I am just looking to build a list of people with processing capacity who might be interested, so that I can show it to venture investors.

Jonathan.

Count me in, Jonny!  Tell 'em my company name is "The Biodiesel Baron!"  Can I get those algae feedstocks in a range of pretty colors?

 

Just so i am to correctly understand your multiple thread creation request.

Your plan is to put together a group of processors to process your huge amount of algal oil that you will be supplying over the next 9 - 18 months? In addition, this new algal feedstock will be well under market values?

My plan is to sell my algal oil feedstocks, which will be produced in 9-18 months, to a group of customers.

Let us know if this project ever comes to fruition.   Many similar claims have been discussed here. I've been visiting these forums for around 3 years now and none of them announced any results yet.

In that same time frame, Farms and small communities in Germany and around the world have replace all their energy needs with Bio-Digester's.

 Less talk and more work people.  I know I'm guilty of this to.
 

I am a little curious -

You're going to put $15M (OPM) into a facility to grow algae and extract the oil and starches, but not invest the small additional amount to add biodiesel processing and ethanol mashing, fermentation, and distillation?

This seems strange - you're forgoing 2 known products with established and well-defined markets, and producing just the intermediate stuff instead, to an unknown market? Not to mention that if you ship away the starches, you lose a lot of CO2 (fermentation byproduct) that you could pump back into your algae?

I don't get it.

bonehead:

I am a little curious -

You're going to put $15M (OPM) into a facility to grow algae and extract the oil and starches, but not invest the small additional amount to add biodiesel processing and ethanol mashing, fermentation, and distillation?

This seems strange - you're forgoing 2 known products with established and well-defined markets, and producing just the intermediate stuff instead, to an unknown market? Not to mention that if you ship away the starches, you lose a lot of CO2 (fermentation byproduct) that you could pump back into your algae?

I don't get it.

 Bonehead, I think these are good questions. I can't answer, authoritatively, for JLG, but perhaps his reasoning is similar to this idea: specialize. Be an expert at something, make good alliances with others who will be your customers. Don't compete with your customers.  Focus your expertise, your capital, your market research, your finances on a segment of the market you can fully understand.

This is backwards of what some people who are interested in biodiesel want to do, because they like the idea of independence that biodiesel provides. On a small scale, you can go from farm to fuel and it's practical. But being so vertical may not be the best on the large, industrial scale. There's room for both approaches.

 
So, JLG, am I close in my description of your business logic? I'm not the MBA, but I like to think I've learned something.
 

I own a company that supplies feedstock oils to bio-diesel producers.  We buy & sell large volumes monthly (250,000 mt), and have many long term contracts.  Demand is larger than supply!  If you can produce good quality feedstock oil, I will buy everything you can produce.

Regards,

Andy

 Jonathon,

great minds think alike.  I have a venture capital company for algae based feedstocks for biodiesel , based off of technology developed at ASU(those 120 degree summer days aren't so bad anymore).   I am with Pinnacle Capital Group, Scottsdale, AZ.  I already have customers for refining.  I need customers for burning and distribution.  Lets talk.

Ed Westerfield

David Cohn 

edwestrfld@aol.com  480-212-1100

 I am interested in hearing how your plans are coming along Jonathan. As i've mentioned before, we're practically neighbors, so maybe we can work on projects together. I'd try to hook you up with some of the people who do venture funding, though my experience with trying to raise money has only been for computer technology projects.

As for others who have questioned why concentrate on one part of the business: It is by finding niches to operate in that companies can become successful. One entepreneur can focus on a particular part of the whole energy process, and another entepreneur on another. For instance, my interests have focused on Botryococcus braunii and its oils. I wish to produce the raw oil, and then sell it to others who crack it to useful fuels in the most efficient way they find possible. I would expect to have multiple customers, and my customers to have multiple suppliers, and in this way we have redundancy and realistic pricing.  

 If you can produce oil at affordable prices it will sell with no problems. I can have it all sold for you from my website at fair market value if you can't find buyers. In addition you should think of other profitable areas of the market such as selling succesful algae cultures that have high performance value - just my two cents.