LanzaTech Global has selected North Sea Port in Ghent, Belgium as the site for what the company describes as Europe’s first commercial alcohol-to-jet SAF facility, a €500 million project sized for 79,000 tonnes of sustainable aviation fuel and 9,000 tonnes of renewable diesel a year. LanzaTech is a member of the FLITE consortium (Fuel via Low carbon Integrated Technology from Ethanol), which received EU Horizon 2020 funding under grant agreement No. 857839 for ATJ technology development at pre-commercial scale.
The site choice is the structural decision in this project. The facility sits directly across the canal from ArcelorMittal’s Steelanol plant, Europe’s first commercial steel-gas-to-ethanol facility. That gives the ATJ unit a dedicated, short-haul, low-carbon ethanol feed without a road or rail logistics chain to manage — and removes the feedstock question that has held back most European ATJ developers from FID.
“This is a world-class location that gives the project every advantage it needs to succeed.” — Jennifer Holmgren, CEO, LanzaTech
The project is designed for compliance with CORSIA, EU ReFuelEU Aviation, and the UK SAF Mandate. Construction is expected to create approximately 300 FTE positions over a three-year build, with around 50 permanent jobs once operational. An Environmental Impact Assessment scoping notification will be submitted imminently, on the path toward Final Investment Decision. No FID date has been published.
For Cas König, CEO of North Sea Port, the FLITE project fits the port’s Impact 2030 plan, which targets renewable-fuels capacity as part of the cluster’s decarbonisation roadmap. North Sea Port already hosts steel-gas ethanol production, methanol bunkering trials, and one of Europe’s larger renewable-hydrogen pipelines under development.
What’s worth watching is how this lines up with the e-SAF supply gap European airlines have been flagging. ATJ is not e-SAF — it is a HEFA-alternative bio-pathway — but it lands in the same compliance bucket under ReFuelEU’s 6% SAF mandate stepping up in 2030. A 79,000-tpa European ATJ plant on Steelanol feedstock is one of the few visible projects that could deliver meaningful SAF volume into the EU compliance window before 2030 without leaning on imported HEFA.
The other lift: FLITE has selected a site and named a feedstock supplier, but the project still needs FID. The FLITE consortium’s ability to lock in offtake, sponsor equity, and EU debt financing on a timeline that delivers SAF into the 2030 step-up window is the next test.
Source: LanzaTech / GlobeNewswire
