EcoCeres, the Hong Kong-headquartered biofuels producer with a major production facility in Malaysia, has issued a public call for EU policymakers to keep the sustainable aviation fuel market open to international trade. The company is pushing back against the EU’s antidumping duties on biofuel imports from the United States, Indonesia, and Argentina — measures that were extended to cover SAF specifically in September 2025 — arguing they will restrict supply at precisely the moment Europe needs it most.
The stakes are straightforward. Europe’s SAF supply is already stretched against the obligations set out in the ReFuelEU Aviation Regulation, which mandates minimum blending levels starting at 2% in 2025 and rising to 70% by 2050. Adding trade barriers that restrict imports from three of the world’s largest biofuel-producing regions does not resolve the supply gap — it deepens it. EcoCeres argues that the policy and trade framework must strengthen the conditions for supply growth, not constrain them.
“The EU’s antidumping duties on SAF imports from the US, Indonesia, and Argentina risk undermining fair competition, weakening supply security, and working against the EU’s own climate objectives,” the company stated. EcoCeres positions itself directly in the crosshairs of these measures: it operates a facility in Malaysia ramping to near full capacity and has been supplying — or positioning to supply — European aviation customers with HEFA-based SAF.
The September 2025 extension of existing biofuel antidumping duties to include SAF is the specific policy trigger behind EcoCeres’s intervention. The original duties were designed to protect EU biofuel producers from what Brussels determined to be unfairly priced imports. Applying the same framework to SAF carries a different set of consequences: SAF is not a commodity with abundant domestic supply to protect — it is a fuel in acute shortage, with European airlines, airports, and fuel suppliers all under regulatory pressure to source more of it.
“The policy and trade framework must strengthen — not constrain — the conditions needed for steady supply growth, free trade and technological innovation.”
— EcoCeres
The company’s intervention also carries a self-interested dimension worth noting. EcoCeres has been building production capacity at its Malaysian facility specifically to service European demand, and the antidumping framework — while not targeting Malaysia directly — creates a chilling effect on international SAF trade flows by signalling that the EU is willing to use trade defence tools in a market that is structurally undersupplied.
The broader tension here is between industrial policy and climate policy. EU trade defence instruments are designed to protect domestic industries; ReFuelEU is designed to decarbonise aviation. When the same set of imported molecules serves both as competition for domestic producers and as the supply that makes climate compliance possible, those two policy objectives come into direct conflict. EcoCeres is making the case that, in this instance, climate objectives should take precedence.
With ReFuelEU blending obligations already in force and European SAF producers unable to meet demand alone, the EU will face continued pressure from international suppliers and airline trade groups to reconsider how trade defence tools are applied to this particular fuel category. EcoCeres’s public statement is an opening move in what is likely to become a longer policy debate.
Source: Biofuels International
