XCF Global on June 1, 2026 confirmed that catalyst loading has begun at the New Rise Renewables Reno facility in Nevada, with the company stating it “continues to expect production to begin in early June 2026, subject to final commissioning activities and standard start-up procedures.” The plant has completed catalyst replacement, targeted equipment enhancements and heat-exchange improvements during the upgrade cycle. New Rise Reno holds a permitted nameplate capacity of 38 million gallons per year of combined renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel. The June 1 release follows a May 14 update flagging that the isomerization catalyst was scheduled to arrive slightly ahead of schedule, and a May 18 statement framing the EPA’s final Renewable Fuel Standard rule as supportive of the start-up economics. As of June 13, XCF has not issued a follow-up confirming that first production has been achieved within the early-June window.
The framing matters. New Rise Reno was constructed by Ryze Renewables and never reached sustained commercial production before bankruptcy and the XCF acquisition. What is happening at Reno is closer to a first sustained commissioning of a never-stabilised facility than a routine restart of a known-good asset. The scope of the upgrade campaign — full catalyst replacement, targeted equipment enhancements and heat-exchange improvements — is consistent with that reading rather than with a turnaround restart. This is one of the few US SAF and renewable diesel projects currently in active commissioning rather than at FID, FEED or pre-construction, but it is not the same kind of capacity addition as a Calumet, DGD or World Energy unit returning from planned maintenance.
The successful delivery and receipt of our process catalyst at New Rise Reno marks a pivotal operational milestone in the refinery’s modernization program.
That line, from XCF Global CEO and Board Chair Chris Cooper, frames the operational milestone. (Cooper was appointed Board Chair effective May 28, 2026, retaining the CEO role.) The corporate situation around the start-up is the part worth holding onto. XCF Global on June 9, 2026 disclosed that Nasdaq had granted an additional 180-day period to regain minimum-bid-price compliance, extending the listing-compliance deadline to December 7, 2026. On May 29, the company confirmed that the three-party business combination agreement with DevvStream and Southern Energy Renewables remains active, with a Form S-4 registration statement expected to file with the SEC in the coming weeks. These are not operating-plant issues, but they shape how the start-up cash flows convert into shareholder value. A 38-million-gallon RD/SAF facility reaching first sustained production at the same moment the parent is working through a Nasdaq bid-price extension and a three-party merger is a different signal than the same start-up at a fully-stable issuer.
The policy backdrop is best read as a default rather than a windfall. New Rise Reno’s first gallons fall under the post-December-31-2025 calculation track of the DOE’s June 12 update to the 45ZCF-GREET model by simple operation of the OBBBA effective date, not by virtue of restart timing. Every post-2025 US biofuel gallon clears under the same track. The substantive point is that the project finance case for the next set of US SAF and RD additions now has a fixed carbon-intensity methodology to size against — which is the structural value of the update to a near-term operator like New Rise.
Two things the June 1 release does not disclose are worth holding onto. The split between renewable diesel and SAF in the 38-million-gallon nameplate is not specified, so the facility’s incremental contribution to the US SAF supply curve is bracketed rather than known. And no offtake or commercial customer was named in the May 14 or June 1 updates. That absence is the variable to watch as commissioning completes — book-and-claim attribute buyers, physical-fuel offtakers and any LCFS pathway certification will determine the per-gallon revenue stack that the start-up actually clears.
The forward read is on the slope of US SAF production additions over the next two quarters. Calumet’s Montana Renewables, Diamond Green Diesel, World Energy Paramount and LanzaJet Freedom Pines are the small US commercial-scale SAF producer set; Twelve’s AirPlant One commercial PtL plant opened in Moses Lake on June 10-11, and New Rise Reno is the next addition if the early-June start-up window converts to first sustained production. The WSU 2030 US SAF supply trajectory SAFpath covered last month assumed the existing US asset base would run at roughly its current cadence with selective additions; this is one of the selective additions, and its arrival timing relative to 45Z certainty is the question worth tracking through Q3 2026.
Source: XCF Global newsroom
