Puma Energy’s commitment to supporting the circular economy took a big step forward this month when it expanded into El Salvador. Last year Puma became the first energy company to collect Used Cooking Oil (UCO) in Central America through our project in Guatemala.
After the success of the project in Guatemala the plan was always to expand into additional markets across the region and the team has since launched a project in El Salvador with a flagship supplier – Campero and Don Pollo, two regional fast-food chicken chains with 51 retail outlets. The UCO is collected, transported and processed into biodiesel, which in turn can be used as a clean burning renewable fuel, introducing circular economy initiatives to emerging markets and in line with our strategy to support and deploy cleaner energy.
The team is now working hard to get all the logistics in place so that we’re ready to incorporate an 272 additional points of sale into collection routes. Moving forward, we’ll be looking to keep building out the business and capture new opportunities in additional markets.
As the global demand for renewable energy increases, biodiesel production is growing fast. Biodiesel is typically blended up to 5 to 10% with traditional fuels and can achieve between 50 and 99 per cent greenhouse gas savings versus fossil fuel equivalents. Government mandates for these “drop-in” fuels are accelerating and several countries already have specific quality and sustainability requirements in place. UCO has become an important second-generation biofuel feedstock as it’s more sustainable than first-generation food crops and is relatively cheap to procure. However, it can be difficult to source at scale and requires some macro logistics.
A particular highlight last year was to achieve ISCC certification (International Sustainability & Carbon Certification).
