SHAREHOLDERS in biofuels company D1 Oils have approved plans to raise £48.7m through a share placing, part of which will be used to nearly treble the size of its Teesside site.
The Teesside group will now admit 29,838,848 shares onto the AIM at 165p each, to raise money for investment in plant science and crop production and the expansion of its refineries in Middlesbrough and on Merseyside.
Its shareholders voted by a majority to approve the move at the company's extraordinary general meeting on Thursday, with an option of placing further shares in the future to raise another £9.35m.
D1, which has its global headquarters in Middlesbrough, is to increase the production capacity of its Teesside biodiesel plant, which produces 32,000 tonnes of fuel a year and employs about 65 people, by another 60,000 tonnes.
About 15 more jobs would be created.
Together with its planned renewable fuels site at Bromborough, in the North-West, the group expects to produce 420,000 tonnes of biodiesel by the end of 2008.
D1 has said that a substantial portion of the money raised would be invested in plant science and the growing of oil-bearing jatropha crops, which are used to make the fuel, at plantations in Asia and Africa.
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