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The world's first fair trade fuel could be developed in Oxfordshire, if ambitious plans by a pioneering green company progress.

Regenatec based at Milton Park, near Didcot, has teamed up with Indian company Cleanstar to explore the possibilities of producing large quantities of oil from the jatropha plant.

Conventional biofuel crops such as corn and sugar have attracted criticism because they have been taking up land needed for food production but jatropha is a perennial plant which can grow in arid conditions and can produce far more oil per square mile.

Now Cleanstar, run by Shashank Verma and Sagun Saxena, graduates from the Oxford University's Said Business School, has planted one million plants on wasteland near Bombay and trials on the first oil produced are being carried out.

Regenatec managing director Mike Lawton said: "Rather than having the approach to biofuels we do now, jatropha allows us to work with the landscape and indigenous plantations in a sustainable and ethical way."

If the trials go well, Mr Lawton said he was looking to join forces with Cleanstar to form a single Anglo-Indian company, Regenastar.

He added: "We have put together a business plan and if we can obtain finding, we will merge the firms which will mean we can control everything from field to fuel tank.

"There are 16 million hectares of official wasteland in India, so the idea is to replace a significant amount of diesel in vehicles, without displacing food crops."

Regenatec has won a string of awards in the last year for its development of new technology designed to allow conventional diesel engines to run on refined used vegetable oil.

But Mr Lawton said there is not enough waste oil produced to make it a genuine alternative to fossil fuels but the technology that has been developed would mean jotropha oil could be used immediately.

Regenatec last week played host to a delegation of commercial officers from a range of foreign embassies and high commissions.

They were show a bus and a refuse truck powered by vegetable oil as part of a fact-finding tour to report to their countries on renewable technology being developed in the UK.

Mr Lawton said particlular interest had come from the Abu Dhabi representative as it looked to move away from its dependency on oil.

He added: "It has been a fantastic year for Regenatec - we've gone from being ignored by engine manufacturers and vehicle assemblers to now working on the detail of factory fit trials.

"We are now looking to undertake initial fund raising to expand our operation. The next 12 months promises to be even more exciting."

10:19am Tuesday 25th September 2007

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