Alabama Green Lubricants last week announced that construction will begin soon on an oil re-refinery project, the company's first, to be located in the Childersburg Industrial Park in Talladega County. The company said that it has completed the debt financing phase for its 32 million gallons per year re-refining project that will produce approximately 23 million gallons per year of lube base oil.

The re-refinery, expected to cost $49 million to build, will employ 25 people at full employment. The plant is expected to be operational by mid 2015.

“We will basically produce base oil and light distillate fuel, which we can use at our plant or sell to other blenders said John Redmond, president of AGL. About 15 percent of what comes in will be heavy, viscous materials known as asphalt flux, and we hope to be able to sell that to roofing and shingle manufacturing companies and asphalt companies for road building and construction projects. So 70 percent of the material is recovered as base oil, 15 percent as light distillate fuel and 15 percent as asphalt flux,” Redmond said. “We will create useable products out of everything that comes in.”

The recycling plant will be AGL’s first, but there are eight others operating in the United States and 28 in Europe, Redmond said. “We have a long way to go to catch up with the Europeans. They started re-refining long before we did. We will be number nine in the United States. This project has been in the works for the better part of two years."

Company officials said they selected Childersburg due to its central location in the company’s targeted service area, exceptional transportation infrastructure, and the pro-business environment demonstrated by the City of Childersburg, Talladega County, and the State of Alabama.

Chemical Engineering Partners will provide the used oil re-refining process and technology. AGL founder and CEO Ramki Srinivasan said CEP was chosen because of its work with other plants in the U.S., Europe and South America. CEP provided the catalyst technology for the Evergreen Oil rerefinery in Newark, California, (acquired out of bankruptcy by Clean Harbors in September of last year for $60 million) which has 1,150 barrels per day of API Group II rerefined base oil capacity.