Page 10 - RenderFeb26
P. 10
Traceability Explained Continued from page 7
to be, increasingly important for the biofuels industries, with end along the supply chain — become so integral to biofuels and so heavily regulated by governments?
A: In my view, the importance of traceability really comes back to the structure of these programs. Many of the major incentives at that scale, governments want to make sure the system isn’t being misused. So traceability becomes the mechanism for verifying that the environmental claims are real and that fraud, waste and abuse are minimized.
And it’s not just regulators. Consumers and downstream buyers care about this too, which is why you see traceability and come with a credible, auditable story about where the feedstock originated and how it moved through the supply chain.
regulations, who is responsible to prove traceability of feedstock — the renderer up the chain or the biofuel producer
A: Technically, in many programs the fuel producer or importer is the obligated party and carries the regulatory
audits and data requirements. So even if a renderer isn’t directly
because their data determines whether the fuel producer is compliant. It’s a shared chain of accountability now.
Q: Some renderers produce biofuels and some biofuel other words, what must renderers concern themselves with and if so, when and where?
A: Historically, most of the traceability and compliance burden has sat with the biofuel producer. They’re the ones who demonstrate eligibility under the relevant programs, manage credits, maintain mass balance and satisfy auditors. So been where the greatest complexity lived.
What’s changed is that more of the underlying data needed to support those claims now originates upstream. Regulators and buyers increasingly want to understand not only what type of feedstock is being delivered, but also how it was processed, how energy was used, how emissions are allocated across co-
That means renderers today aren’t necessarily being asked to track restaurant-level or farm-level origins, but they are being asked to provide a clearer and more detailed picture of the material types they handle, the way those materials are
The real overlap between renderers and producers happens “tallow” in a generic sense. The material now needs to arrive
Traceability in Dynamic Markets
Restaurant
Collection Point
Aggregation End User Point
Collector
Aggregator
What do you do when you don’t know where the product is going?
Courtesy of Veriflux
8 February 2026 Render
www.rendermagazine.com
