There will be a staion located in Marrackville pumping Biodiesel in early to mid January. I would like some input as to the preferred blend. Any suggestions?
I expect a rousing turn out from this group. Morris Lyda

Aah! Morris, I now see from this post that you will be selling Biodiesel from a service station, presumably also to the general public. If you don't want to scare off your un-informed customers, you may like to follow the lead of South Australia's Farmer's Fuel, and provide the option of , say, B20 and B100. While there is not yet the terror whipped a couple years ago about Ethanol in Petrol, I'm sure many people will be wary of any non-Diesel fuel. There is already much misinformation being spread quite innocently in the 4wd scene regarding Biodiesel. It is probably beyond your resources as a small business to educate the public about the benefits of BD, but some sort of re-educating will be necessary for you to sell the volumes of BD needed to remain viable.
Good luck!

Hi Morris,

As replied on another thread, I will be keen to support your BD at the bowser!!!

Keep us informed as to blends available and when you'll be selling.

What is your proposed re: cents / litre??

cheers,

Geoff.

Perhaps Morris you could do a bit of Free Gurilla marketing to 1., let people know what you have and where you are and 2., to educate people about BD.

I would suggest you have a grand opening and put out press releases and Invite a minister and/ or the local pollie along to cut the ribbon on the first BD pump in Sydney. Particularly if it is a slow news week, you will probably get some air time as well as some ink. All you have to do is put on the usual razamatazz for the media circus and you will likely get more coverage and exposure than what you could dream. All you have to do is give the media a good angle and let them run with it for you. I would suggest you make up media kits complete with info and pics ( on disk) and lots of background info on BD so any reporters can learn all they need to know so they can do a write up on you. A nice touch may be to get some small vials of BD and give them out. never underestimate the power of novelites on bored Journo's.

Maybe you could invite the minister for enviroment, green peace or whoever else would give you their seal of approval and spread the word amoungst their followers. Invite some knowledgeable person from this site to give a speech on the benifits of BD and the importance of your contribution to the enviroment to sydney siders in making BD available to them etc.
I would also send press releases and info to all the 4wd clubs, trucking companies, get the local council to undergo a " clean green" trial of the stuff in one of their trucks ( which paves the way for you to lobby them to eventually buy all their diesel based fuel from you in future) and just let as many diesel users as possible know about you. I would suggest you play the green angle and if you can sell below normal diesel prices, you have a very strong marketing angle right there as well with volume and commercial users who would all be looking to cut fuel costs like never before.

If you need to overcome any resistance to your product, give away some free samples to 4wd clubs, commercial users etc so they can see how it works for themselves. Depending on how much fuel you can supply and how big you want to get you may also consider hiring a mareting person/ sales rep to go see different group and compaines and secure you some contracts.

If you havent already, I would be doing a website which was infomation based and even include material that kids could use for school projects. You may only be selling BD but don't fail to look at the real big picture and capatalise on each and every opportunity. I would also look at establishing a defineable moniker for your product with a view to brand recognition in the future when you open more outlets. Personally, I think you are sitting on a potential goldmine and would be more concerned about your ablity to keep up with demand rather than stay in business. You have a fantastic marketing USP and promoted the right way I think this should take off like a sky rocket.
If your are looking for a marketing and promotions person to help you with this, let me know.

You have a great opporunity here, virtually an untouched market so make the most of it and good luck to you.

Thank you Gunner, Gbrought, and David for your comments.
I am not sure if you are aware, but based on my endless work in excel, there is not much money in this project.
If it takes off, and if there is additional fuinding for more, and increase consumer acceptance, and then several more stations opened (with ethical retail) this could make some money, but only in time. This started off as a labor of desire, and it will continue in this manner until it falls in the red for too long of a period of time.

So here is the short scoop.
I will be trialing B20, B50, and B100 for a few weeks, if the results come close to expectations, I will add ethanol and do a bit of a revamp on the station.
There is a fair amount of risk in this, and I do not want to get caught with my pants around my ankles, so I will start small and grow as the winds pick up. My business plan is aggressive and I can expand quickly in favorable conditions.

I am counting (to a certain degree) on the support from the Users Group, but I have good interest from some of the Councils as well. However, I cannot risk a big splash opening at this point, until I have idenified a market potential, completed the business plan, and enlisted added capital. As David said, this is a gold mine, but there are thousands that lost their pants digging in gold mines. Thank you for your offer David, I would appreciate any marketing assistance you can lend to the project. Robert has agreed to assit in the development of a website, and I know I can count on everyone to buy a little BD when they are in the area.

Now for the news of today. I will be getting my product from ABG (at least for now). They have requested that I refrain from selling B100 to the public and restrict my sales to fleets. I can only sell to fleets that, quote, " who have firstly had one or more staff attend a two-hour Information Briefing Session at our Berkeley Vale factory. They will enjoy this and realize the minor limitations and great benefits of this new fuel." I think this might include you guys, although I have yet to pose the question to ABG. Is this a problem? Feedback please. I hope to be selling product by this time next week. Thanks - ML

Well, there are a few of us who are already "initiated" with ABG fuel, having first bought it from Waterways.
I can see where they are coming from with not wanting to sell biodiesel to the average bloke off the street in light of the ethanol debacle that happened. I can understand that fleet sales would be less risky in this respect and far easier to manage any problems with a mechanically educated fleet manager in the middle.
When we first banded together, it was so that we individuals could gain access to the fuel that had previously only been available to the fleets. I suppose we became our own mini fleet. Now, we are not all mechanically educated (though some of us are) and we are not a legal entity as far as any liability issues are concerned, but we are still capable of buying in quantity and sorting out our own issues and not blaming the supplier first off.

Now as for the "staff" to attend the 2 hour seminar, I'd be happy to volunteer. I've been meaning to take a trek up that way for some time now anyway to have a look. If someone is offering to educate me further - yeah, I'm up for that. Perhaps there may be some others too - time allowing?

I guess it's up to ABG really as to whether they'd recognise our group as a fleet or not. I might move this section of the thread to a new thread to discuss this bit properly (now I've done this).

__________________
Robert Fyvie
Site Admin
Sydney Biodiesel Users' Group and Australian Biofuel Users


......................................................
2007 Mazda 6 Diesel ..................................2000 Peugeot 306..........................2001 Landrover (retired)
2L Turbo charged (Common Rail) ...................XTdt 1.9L Turbo ............................Freelander TD4 (Common Rail)
on B100.................................................. ...on B100.......................................on B100

Robert, I will check this out completely on Monday, but it seems (on the surface) to be a good idea and an opportunity to do some educated recon.

Last note, I will price the BD in Marrcikvile at or near the median diesel price (as noted in Motormouth. ML

I'm willing to be 'educated', although I'm one of those members who doesn't know much about fuel and engines. My time is reasonably flexible so I'll just follow this post for details.

Cheers

Phil

I don't mind being educated either maybe we can get a group get together at the factory.

I'm a little confused here morris so would appreciate a bit of clarification of what i'm missing.

Firstly, I'm just a bit confused when you say you want to trial B100 for a few weeks and then mention the word " refrain" from selling it. So is that a yes you will be selling it to the public or not or will it only be in limited qty's?

I see you are going to be trialing 2 blends and a straight(?) BD. how are you going to market / explain these to your customers? I understand the difference in the bend ratio but I am not sure myself why you would use a 20% over 50% for instance and why a blend at all over straight B100?. Is this a confidence thing for the end user as in " ill just try a little bit of it in my fuel to see how it goes" type thing?

As to an opening, This need not be when you actually open the doors but could be a month or 2 later. It's the "official opening " that you want to have. This need not be a very expensive at all. Bit of pr and info material, Few drinks for some pollie or council / fleet reps and your there. The benifit of this would be it would actually help you get a better feel for where you main markets may lie. You are bound to start talking to someone or be approached by someone from a field you never thought about and it could give you a whole different idea to work on.

Unless I'm missing something, I would assume most of your costs in this project are actually fixed. Your non fixed costs would be product and a few incidentals associated with selling more product which would be associated with it selling greater volume and therefore cover themselves. While you may not want to go out and set up a bunch more stations, I think going into this first one you really want to hit it hard as possible from the outset rather than take it slow or try to build up too much. If it is to be a business you don't want to even think of it falling in the red at all.

I am glad to lend what help I can and would be interested to see your business plan as far as the marketing and business development sections go. I would also be interested to go to the BD breifing depending on when it is. Interesting to see what they are trying to educate people in. I think BD is well past the proving it works stage but perhaps they are more concerned with changeover problems such as filters clogging from the left over diesel residue.

If you like to get in contact with me a tobedifferent -at- hotmail . com I'd be happy to discuss what I can do to assist your venture.