The answer to one of the biggest questions in UK agriculture – when will the Ensus wheat ethanol plant restart – may be "another four months", farm officials have said in a restatement of grain estimates.

The Home Grown Cereals Authority, the UK grains bureau, has ditched expectations of the site, Europe's biggest wheat ethanol plant, reopening this year.

However, it named its "assumed restart date" as "February-March 2012", which would mean the plant, in the north of England, being mothballed for some 10 months – more than twice as long as the site originally envisaged.

Jack Watts, HGCA senior analyst, said that the authority made its assumptions, factored into a revised wheat balance sheet, "not on what we think will happen, but on statements by companies themselves".

'Frustrated'

A spokesman for Ensus, when asked of the stite's likely restart date, declined to speculate but pointed to a statement at the end of last month.

Then, Ensus - which is backed by private equity groups Carlyle Group and Riverstone Holdings and includes commodities giant Glencore, Shell and fertilizer group Yara International among partners – said it "remains confident in the future of the business longer term".

The statement added that, while the company was "frustrated by the slow development of the market", there had been "some encouraging progress" in areas such as implementing the European Union's Renewable Energy Directive, which decrees that by the end of the decade 20% of energy used in the bloc must some from renewable sources.

It also singled out as "positive" a measure by the EU to close a loophole which has allowed imports of ethanol blended 90% with 10% gasoline to enter the bloc as an alcohol product rather than a fuel, so garnering a lower duty.

"It is anticipated that this will benefit the industry from its introduction some time in the first quarter of 2012," Ensus said.

Industry setbacks

The group, whose shutdown Agrimoney.com revealed last May, initially said it was to close for up to four months, pressed by high wheat prices and the cheap US ethanol imports.

Delays have also struck a second, nearby plant, named Vivergo, backed by the likes of Associated British Foods, BP and DuPont, thanks to run-ins with contractors.

"The plant, which will produce up to 420m litres of bioethanol and up to 500,000 tonnes of high-protein, high-fibre animal feed, is now scheduled to be operational in spring 2012," ABF said last week.

Looser supplies

The sites are significant to questions of UK wheat availability given their significant potential consumption, of a combined 2.4m tonnes a year, nearly equivalent to the country's exportable surplus.

The HGCA lifted its estimate for the exportable surplus in 2011-12 by 211,000 tonnes to 2.72m tonnes reflecting rather than the ethanol plant delays, a weaker estimate for feed use, "based in part on better availability of forage crops".

The impact of the bioethanol delays was offset in the balance sheet by raised consumption by distillers of white spirits, which are expected to see additional capacity come on online in January.

The UK shipped 559,000 tonnes of wheat in the July-to-September period, the first quarter of the 2011-12 marketing year, customs data showed on Tuesday.

"It is expected that the UK should ship 1.2m tonnes by the end of the [calendar] year," the UK grain arm of a major commodities house said.

London wheat for May closed up 0.5% at £152.05 a tonne.