Page 314 - BWA FEB 2013

314 | Business World Magazine | February 2013
the firm’s first small-scale plant was the first
commercially viable biodiesel operation in
the United States. Pacific Biodiesel has since
been fueling generators, commercial fleets,
farm equipment, county busses, military and
county vehicles, not to mention hundreds
of personal vehicles, on the refined, residual
energy of materials once discarded – used
cooking oil and the gooey mess collected
from local restaurant grease traps.
Beyond solving an environmental
problem, the Kings helped launched an in-
dustry by creating a working system, which
helped spur on other similar businesses. Two
years later Robert was approached by a Japa-
nese businessman who owned about 30 Ken-
tucky Fried Chicken franchise operations in
Nagano, Japan. Noting the success with used
cooking oil, Soichiro Yoshida sought Pacif-
ic Biodiesel’s expertise and contracted the
company to build a plant in Nagano. After
completion of this project, Pacific Biodiesel
returned the focus on Hawaii and built a fa-
cility in Honolulu with twice the capacity
of the original Maui plant. In its 17 years of
success, Pacific Biodiesel has built 12 plants
throughout the United States. The compa-
ny’s newest project, Big Island Biodiesel, re-
cently launched production on the island of
Hawaii.
Oil is contained in these seed pods from the camelina plant.