By Chen Aizhu

SINGAPORE, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Chinese biodiesel manufacturers are seeking brand-new outlets in Asia for their exports and checking out producing other biofuels as supply to the European Union, their most significant buyer, dries up ahead of anti-dumping tariffs, biofuel executives and experts stated.

The EU will impose provisional anti-dumping tasks of between 12.8% and 36.4% on Chinese biodiesel from Friday, hitting over 40 companies including leading manufacturers Zhejiang Jiaao, Henan Junheng and Longyan Zhuoyue Group in an export organization that deserved $2.3 billion last year.

Some larger manufacturers are eyeing the marine fuel market in China and Singapore, the world's top marine fuel center, as they seek to offset currently falling biodiesel exports to the EU, biofuel executives stated.

Exports to the bloc have actually fallen greatly given that mid-2023 in the middle of examinations. Volumes in the very first six months of this year plunged 51% from a year previously to 567,440 tons, Chinese custom-mades information showed.

June shipments diminished to simply over 50,000 tons, the most affordable because mid-2019, according to custom-mades data.

At their peak, exports to the EU reached a record 1.8 million tons in 2023, representing 90% of all Chinese biodiesel exports that year. The Netherlands was the leading importer in 2023, soaking in 84% of China's biodiesel deliveries to the EU, followed by Belgium and Spain, Chinese customs figures showed.

Chinese manufacturers of biodiesel have actually taken pleasure in fat profits in the last few years, maximizing the EU's green energy policy that gives subsidies to business that are using biodiesel as a sustainable transport fuel such as Repsol, Shell and Neste.

A lot of China's biodiesel producers are privately-run small plants using ratings of employees processing waste oil gathered from countless Chinese restaurants. Before the biodiesel export boom, they were making lower-value products like soaps and processing leather products.

However, the boom was short-lived. The EU began in August in 2015 examining Indonesian biodiesel that was believed of preventing duties by going through China and Britain, followed by a 14-month anti-dumping probe into Chinese biodiesel thought to be priced synthetically low and damaging regional manufacturers.

Anticipating the tariffs, traders stockpiled on utilized cooking oil (UCO), lifting rates of the feedstock, while prices of biodiesel sank in view of diminishing need for the Chinese supply.

"With hefty costs of UCO partly supported by strong U.S. and European demand, and free-falling item prices, business are having a bumpy ride surviving," said Gary Shan, primary marketing officer of Henan Junheng.

Prices of hydrotreated vegetable oil, or HVO, a primary kind of biodiesel, have cut in half versus in 2015's average to the current $1,200 to $1,300 per metric lot and are off a peak of $3,000 in 2022, Shan added.

With low rates, biodiesel plants have cut their operations to an all-time low of under 20% of existing capability on average in July, below a peak of 50% last seen in early 2023, according to Chinese consultancies Sublime China Information and JLC.

Meanwhile, shrinking biodiesel sales are increasing China's UCO exports, which analysts anticipate are set to touch a new high this year. UCO exports soared by two-thirds year-on-year in the very first half of 2024 to 1.41 million loads, with the United States, Singapore and the Netherlands the top destinations.

OUTLETS

While lots of smaller sized plants are likely to shutter production forever, bigger producers like Zhejiang Jiaao, Leoking Enviro Group and Longyan Zhuoyue are checking out new outlets including the marine fuel market in your home and in the essential center of Singapore, which is utilizing more biodiesel for ship fuel blending, according to the biofuel executives.

One of the manufacturers, Longyan Zhuoyue, concurred in January with COSCO Shipping to use more biodiesel in marine fuel.

Companies would also accelerate preparation and building of sustainable air travel fuel (SAF) plants, executives said. China is expected to announce an SAF required before the end of 2024.

They have actually also been searching for new biodiesel customers outside the EU bloc, in Australia, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia where there are local mandates for the alternative fuel, the officials added.

(Reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by Ana Nicolaci da Costa)