The plant is built and operated by Chemrec, a Swedish-based technology company, at the company’s development plant located at Smurfit Kappa's kraftliner mill in Piteå.BioDME from forest residues over the Chemrec process reduces net greenhouse gas emissions with about 95 percent, compared to use of petroleum-based diesel oil, the traditional fuel for heavy road transports, according to Chemrec. It also provides excellent engine performance and vehicle drivability. The potential is significant. In Sweden, up to one half of all heavy road transportation could be run on bioDME, and globally well over 30 million cubic meters diesel equivalents per year could be produced from the available black liquor feedstock, enough to fuel one million heavy trucks.“A major step forward for the global biofuels market and an important milestone was achieved today, bringing bioDME closer to commercial deployment, not only for the EU but for the global biofuel market," Kyriakos Maniatis, Energy Technologies & Research Co-ordination at DG Energy of the European Commission, said in his inauguration speech. "This is also a major step forward for the EU strategic energy technology plan, since a unique bioenergy value chain closely linking the pulp and paper industry and bioenergy has been fully deployed for the first time.”This pilot plant is part of the BioDME project where the production of BioDME and its use in heavy trucks is demonstrated.“Since the ground-breaking ceremony for this bioDME plant a year ago, we have made considerable progress. In addition to the building of the plant and getting the Volvo truck test fleet into operation, also the process towards building an industrial scale plant at the Domsjö specialty cellulose mill in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, has advanced,” said Max Jönsson, CEO of Chemrec. “For the Domsjö project main technology providers have now been selected, and we are ready to start the front-end engineering and design phase.”