Europe's largest bioethanol refinery, which expected to use 1.2m tonnes of wheat a year, is poised "within the next month" to take its first deliveries of grain.

The Ensus bioethanol plant should by late December to begin production of ethanol from wheat, delivered initially from farms and merchants nearby its site in the north of England.

The imminent opening, delayed from the summer by strikes, has prompted the UK arm of Glencore, which is in charge of procuring wheat for the plant, to step up calls for wheat for the site.

The recovery in wheat prices, which in London have recovered from £91 a tonne last month to £104.50 a tonne on Monday, "should offer an opportunity for growers to start making sales into there", Hugh Schryver, at Glencore, said.

"We are buying parcels [for] December onwards."

Wheat procurement 

The site has, with a separate bioethanol plant being opened in the same region by a consortium of Associated British Foods, BP and DuPont, has the potential to make the UK a net importer of wheat for the first time.

The UK typically exports about 2m-2.5m tonnes of wheat a year.

However, many observers expect the Ensus plant, backed by US proviate equity funds Carlyle Geroup and Riverstone, to take a large proportion of its wheat from abroad.

"The plant has got to be made an economically viable proposition," Glencore trader Nick Oakhill told Agrimoney.com.

"That means getting wheat from wherever is economically best placed."

Glencore has yet to decide whether to move to buy wheat though farm contracts, with further finessing of procurement strategy expected once the biorefinery has been tested with various specifications of grain.

'Exceptional opportunity' 

The plant will also, as a byproduct, produce so-called dried distiller's grains with solutes, an animal feed which Savills, the land agency, has identified as potential alternative for north of England livestock producers.

"Approximately 30% of the grain used for ethanol production is returned as a high energy, high protein animal feed," the land agency said in a livestock report in August.

"It is bulky and expensive to transport, but for those intensive livestock producers in close proximity to a bioethanol plant it may provide an exceptional opportunity."