Fuel company Harvest Energy has launched a new fuel which claims to reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 18% and sulphur emissions by up to 90%. Called Harvest BioDiesel B30, it is blended in the UK from renewable resources and has a maximum biodiesel content of 30%. In every other respect it complies fully with EN590 – a fact Harvest Energy is willing to guarantee.

Harvest Energy was, of course, the company at the centre of the recent contaminated fuel problem. The company’s head of sales, Simon Davis, said it had been keeping a low profile but felt now was the time to unveil this new fuel.

“There’s been a lot of interest in the fuel from the big car manufacturers including Citroen, Ford, Renault and Peugeot, and we’ve been shipping the fuel to them all to try,” he explained.

Davis said Harvest was already selling the fuel to some commercial customers and once it had received the green light from the big car manufacturers it would start appearing on forecourts for public use. He said the B30 should be okay for use in all diesel cars but said drivers should check, particularly if their car was still under warranty.

Davis believes B30 will become the standard for biodiesel. “Technically people have been able to buy this type of biodiesel before but it was a mixture – we’ve blended a specially selected diesel with a specific biodiesel (which conform to technical specification EN590 and EN14214 respectively) so we can guarantee the specification for the blend.”

He describes the new fuel as being ‘kinder to vehicles’ and says its higher energy content means that in theory drivers should get more miles per gallon.

It is also slightly more ‘competitive’ than standard diesel but that competitiveness would equate to less than 1ppl on the forecourt.

Meanwhile Harvest has been busy paying out on insurance claims over the rogue fuel. Davis claimed that the company has not lost any of its customers and that in fact trading volumes were better than ever.

Topics