US renewables traceability platform Veriflux and the Indonesian Used Cooking Oil (UCO) Exporters Association (Aemji) have partnered to connect tracing technology, which could increase Indonesian UCO trade to the US.
Aemji's UCO collection mobile application has been integrated with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-funded Veriflux traceability system. This should allow biofuel producers to show that Indonesian feedstocks they use are fully traceable back to origin in line with EPA requirements for the US market.
Indonesia will export the first 200t cargo of UCO traced by Simijel through the Veriflux network to Houston this week, stakeholders said when they announced the partnership on 21 September.
Indonesia exported just over 13,000t of UCO to the US during January-July this year, up from near zero in previous years. The US has emerged as an attractive market for Asian UCO since the end of 2022 and has taken significant volumes from China so far this year, as demand and prices have been more robust than in Europe. But meeting the EPA's tracing requirements have been a challenge for many UCO sellers.
The EU is expected to require similar end-to-end traceability once it fully launches its Union Database, which began onboarding system users in January this year. The EU-wide track and trace database was first envisioned as part of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) II enacted in 2021 but there is still no legal deadline for its full implementation.
Although digitalised feedstock traceability should allow Indonesian UCO to grow market share overseas, Indonesia's industry ministry sees exporting UCO as a "temporary solution" to ensure it is removed from the food supply chain, Agro Industry director-general Putu Juli Ardika said at the launch. In the longer term his industry ministry fully supports that Indonesian UCO should be used in domestic renewable fuel production, he added.
