Petrotec AG, has decided how to make the best use of their new funds - EUR 60 million - following the recent IPO.

It plans to build one biodiesel plant in Germany, one in the UK and two in the United States by the end of 2009.

Petrotec is one of the biodiesel companies that places an emphasis on used cooking oil from fast food chains as a feedstock. The cynic in me wonders whether this is a good long term bet considering how certain European policymakers would not mind taxing and regulating the likes of McDonalds and KFC out of existence in the pursuit of public health. I'm not wholly convinced that there will always be endless supplies of used cooking oils as a feedstock. Not least because there are no end of websites that tell you how to make your own biodiesel and if the price of oil is high enough, this black market and its inherent lower costs will emerge.