The Courier

He has just sat down when a customer arrives to fill up. In addition to his residence and his factory, his house is also a service station. His chemist doubles as the pump attendant. The manual pump is started up. The large 4WD fills up. Its owner is clearly delighted to be driving a vehicle whose exhaust emits clean fumes. The demonstration speaks for itself. Rafael Diaz joins in the performance by holding his hand for a full minute behind the exhaust pipe.

Clean as a whistle.

The customer leaves after having given a testimonial that Green Sun could use as an advertising slogan: “I have been using this fuel for a month. The engine runs smoother, there is less pollution and it uses less fuel. In terms of cost and quality, it really makes sense. Nothing had to be changed in the engine; I just switched from one fuel to the other”.

Rafael Diaz sits down and tells the story of Green Sun, and his own story.

Free raw materials

We use recycled cooking oil that comes mainly from the hotel industry. It is waste oil that has been used to fry food. There are tanks at the hotels to recover it. Once the tanks are full, they phone us and we collect them. We don’t pay them; the hotels have to process the oil or they risk a fine, and we offer them a solution.

Price of the fuel

We sell by linking the price of the biodiesel to that of diesel. At present, we charge 85 pesos per gallon compared with 95 for conventional diesel. Ninety percent of our customers are businesses, mainly distribution companies.

Outlook

Businesses are developing fast now in the Dominican Republic. I hope that we will soon be able to benefit from that. It is not difficult to find customers. Also, the state has been running a positive education campaign. If we could produce more, we could sell all our production. But my project is only in its first phase.

Economically, we are starting to have continuous production and sales. This will enable us to increase our production capacity. During the first two years were devoted to market research, setting up the company and making contacts with government bodies. We are now stepping up production. Green Sun’s target is to produce 5,000 gallons per day, with recently developed technology from Europe and the USA. Our product will be able to be certified ‘Dominican biodiesel’ on the market and have a good competitive position.

From Wall Street to biodiesel

I became a biofuel entrepreneur after working in a company at the New York Stock Exchange as a systems engineer. I worked with alternative energy.
I looked for a long time for a business I could run in the Dominican Republic. One day I saw the statistics for diesel consumption, and I said, ok: the market in the Dominican Republic is estimated at 500 million gallons per year. Just 1% represents a small fortune.

No pressure from the oil companies… for the moment

At the beginning, I was worried about having Shell or Texaco as competitors. I was a small entrepreneur, and knew the political clout of those companies in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Currently they are not putting any pressure on us. Right now, no country is self-sufficient because the production of vegetable oil cannot compete with fossil fuels. The entire production of one country is too small to worry Exxon or Texaco.

It was not easy to start this business because a lot of people were sceptical and didn't understand what we were doing. Lots of them thought I was mad, that I would fall flat on my face. But it happened with a lot of hard work and mostly my own money, as there has been only limited investment.

Support

We obtained a credit line of €150,000 from the European Investment Bank, but the principle is €1 invested for €1 borrowed. We could not use it, as we did not have the US$150,000 to invest. And the company’s success so far cannot be used as collateral.

Ecological benefits

Ecologically it’s important. Our country lives from tourism. Less pollution keeps the rivers, sea and air cleaner. We have signed the Kyoto Agreement, which represents an ecological compromise. Moreover, the country can receive ‘green vouchers’ for every ton of CO2 it cuts.