New Britain Palm Oil Ltd (NBPOL)’s new 200,000 tonnes/year palm oil refinery in the Mersey docklands of Liverpool, UK, is expected to be commissioned at the end of the second quarter of 2010.

The company is investing £18M to set up the facility, in an aim to become one of the first palm oil producers to offer fully traceable, sustainable palm oil in the UK and wider Europe.

As part of this aim, NBPOL announced in October that it had signed a US$100M five-year agreement to supply global confectionery group Ferrero with an undisclosed volume of sustainably produced palm oil. The agreement will meet 25% of Ferrero’s palm oil needs.

As part of the agreement, NBPOL will commission a secondary fractionation plant in Papua New Guinea (PNG) to fractionate palm olein. NBPOL already has facilities to mill and produce crude palm oil (CPO) in PNG, refine RBD palm oil and fractionate palm olein and stearin.

The Bootle facility in the UK, once complete, will be able to refine CPO and palm kernel oil. It will be dedicated to NBPOL so there will be no segregation issues and will be able to process the majority of NBPOL’s CPO production. Currently, the company only refines about one-third of its CPO production.

NBPOL chief executive Nick Thomson said: “The establishment of a new palm oil processing facility, based in the UK, positions the company more firmly at the higher value-added end of the supply chain. This investment is part of an overall growth strategy of the company to build an extensive and fully integrated supply chain for its palm oil operations from seed to finished product.”

NBPOL executive director Alan Chaytor said the company chose Liverpool because of its deep water facility ideal for larger shipping vessels; and an agreement with Tate & Lyle to use existing neighbouring tank storage capacity.

NBPOL has selected Desmet Ballestra as its technical partner for the implementation of the plant.