Houston, TX-based Vertex Energy, Inc., an environmental services company that recycles industrial waste streams and off-specification commercial chemical products, released a Letter to Shareholders last week from Benjamin P. Cowart, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, highlighting the Company's assessment of 2015, expectations for 2016, and long-term view.

In his letter, Cowart said "Given our expertise in collecting used motor oil and our significant base oil processing capabilities, the next logical step for Vertex Energy is to produce our own line of finished lubes that can be sold into the market. By doing so, we believe that we can improve margins as we will be able to capture the spread between base oil pricing and finished lube pricing".

Cowart also stated "It is our belief that the current market conditions will result in a consolidation in the used oil collection space similar to the consolidations that occurred in the re-refining sector over the past two years. We intend to be a participant in this anticipated collection consolidation as we seek to grow our own collected volumes for further processing at our various facilities. We believe that this consolidation, combined with our shift away from pay for oil and the continued shrinking of alternative markets for used motor oil, will have the overall impact of reducing feedstock costs in the future.".

Vertex Energy, Inc. is a leading environmental services company that recycles industrial waste streams and off-specification commercial chemical products. Its primary focus is recycling used motor oil and other petroleum by-product streams. Vertex Energy purchases these streams from an established network of local and regional collectors and generators. Vertex Energy also manages the transport, storage and delivery of the aggregated feedstock and product streams to end users, and manages the re-refining of a portion of its aggregated petroleum streams in order to sell them as higher-value end products. Vertex Energy sells its aggregated petroleum streams as feedstock to other re-refineries and fuel blenders or as replacement fuel for use in industrial burners. The re-refining of used motor oil that Vertex Energy manages takes place at its facility, which uses a proprietary Thermal Chemical Extraction Process (“TCEP”) technology. Based in Houston, Texas, Vertex Energy also has offices in California, Chicago, Georgia, Nevada, and Ohio.

In December 2014, Vertex acquired Heartland Group Holdings, owner of a used oil collection network and a rerefinery in Columbus, Ohio having capacity to produce 1,500 barrels per day of Group II base oil.

In March 2014, Vertex announced it agreed to acquire certain Omega Holding Co.’s re-refining assets, related to the re-refining and processing of used motor oil and the distribution of fuel oils and base lubricating oils. including a used oil collection network, two facilities in Louisiana, and lube oil blending plant in California previously owned by Cam2.