LONDON/HAMBURG (Reuters) – The outlook for the European Union’s bioethanol industry looks brighter in 2010 after a bleak couple of years but biodiesel remains dogged by overcapacity and producers face a grim struggle to stay afloat.

The European Union has been expanding the use of the two major biofuels as it seeks to cut emissions of the greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change.

But a political backlash, driven partly by accusations the growth of biofuels had helped to drive up food prices, has led some member states to scale-back support.

Industry sources said, however, the political mood has started to become more favorable again, demand is expected to grow in 2010 and two massive bioethanol refineries are due to come on line in the first half of the year.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s biodiesel industry expects to operate at around 50 percent of capacity in 2010 as taxes are making the green fuel too expensive for motorists, a biofuels industry leader said on Friday.

Germany’s 4.8 million tonne annual capacity biodiesel industry, Europe’s largest, is estimated to have produced about 2.5 million tonnes in 2009, down from 2.7 million tonnes in 2008, said Elmar Baumann, chief executive of German biofuels industry association VBO.

“We expect the same level of capacity use in 2010,” Baumann told Reuters. “The industry is facing a dramatically poor outlook, we will be facing more consolidation in the coming year with more plants being taken out of the market.”

About half of the 49 German biodiesel plants were not working at all and many of the operational plants were producing well under capacity, he said.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s biodiesel industry sees rising demand in 2010 from oil companies for blending with fossil fuels, the head of Germany’s bioethanol industry association said on Friday.

The German government’s plan to raise maximum permitted bioethanol levels in gasoline could boost sales while other European countries were also raising blending levels, said BDBE chief executive Dietrich Klein.

“We are optimistic after a difficult period,” Klein said at the Green Week trade fair. Germany’s new government planned to raise maximum permitted bioethanol levels in gasoline from five percent to ten percent, called E10 blends, to cut pollution.

The new regulation could take force by summer 2010, with major volumes of E10 fuel enter the market by next winter.

HAMBURG (Reuters) – Europe’s food industry is proving slow to buy palm oil certified under a new scheme as produced without destroying tropical rain forests, the head of Germany’s edible oil industry association OVID said on Wednesday.

Some 1.2 million tonnes of palm oil certified under the new programme Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) had been produced since the scheme got underway in autumn 2008 but only 320,000 tonnes had been sold, said OVID chief executive Petra Sprick.

The rest, largely produced in Malaysia and Indonesia, is in storage tanks awaiting buyers.

“The main problem is that this product has an extra price surcharge,” she said. “This is needed as an incentive to producers who face extra costs for certification.”

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s biodiesel industry, Europe’s largest, is suffering from cheap U.S. imports of the green fuel which evade punitive European Union import duties, industry leaders said on Monday.

The EU in May imposed anti-subsidy duties on imports of biodiesel and fossil diesel/biofuel blends with more than 20 percent biodiesel content claiming they were sold at unfairly low prices because of U.S. biofuel subsidies.

But large imports of U.S. fossil diesel/biodiesel blends are still being made into the EU with a 19 percent biodiesel content which escapes EU anti-dumping duties, said Norbert Heim, chief executive of German oilseeds industry association Ufop.

“Such imports are not being sold directly on the market but are being blended with other fuels to achieve the required biodiesel level,” Heim said during a conference on biofuels organized by Ufop and German bioenergy association BBE.

HAMBURG, Nov 26 (Reuters) – The European Union is expected to approve imports of a maize type containing genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in coming days, two leading EU industry associations said on Thursday.

This could enable the resumption of large scale European imports of U.S. soybeans and soymeal as early as December.

EU imports of soybeans and soymeal from the U.S. for animal feed are at a virtual standstill because of the EU’s zero-tolerance rule on imports with traces of GMOs which have not yet been approved in the bloc. [ID:nLM636606]

Two industry associations told Reuters they expect the EU Commission in coming days to make a critical approval of imports of the GMO maize type MIR604, which would open the door for a rapid resumption of imports of soybean and soymeal from the U.S.