RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilian refining company Acelen, backed by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign investor Mubadala, has successfully raised $1.5 billion to kickstart the construction of a massive sustainable fuels refinery in the northeastern state of Bahia.
The funding package will cover half of the venture’s projected $3 billion total cost. A consortium of ten financial institutions is providing a portion of the capital, with the international banking group HSBC and the International Finance Corporation (IFC)—the private sector arm of the World Bank—spearheading the lending group.
Targeted to begin commercial operations in 2029, the greenfield facility is engineered to yield up to 1 billion liters annually of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel.
A unique element of the multi-billion-dollar project is its emphasis on vertical agricultural integration. Alongside standard feedstocks like used cooking oil and soybean oil, the refinery will heavily utilize oil extracted from the macauba palm—a resilient tree native to Brazil. Acelen plans to cultivate the crop on thousands of hectares of compromised pastureland, establishing a reliable, eco-friendly supply chain that avoids contributing to regional deforestation.