SAF Industry at a Glance
April 16, 2025
The key SAF market developments in April 2025 include:
Global economic activity has been thrown into chaos by the current US administration’s fluctuating tariff policies. These are impacting everything from crude oil markets to soybean oil trade, to leisure flight demand. Interestingly they are also bringing underlying issues in global SAF markets into sharp focus.
In a huge blow to the industry, US SAF market participants are reporting to Green Star BCS that the country’s first commercial scale SAF producer - World Energy, Paramount, CA – has shuttered production due to financial pressures.
US SAF markets have tightened in response with customers seeking SAF alternative supply from other sources. This may lead to upward price pressure in coming weeks.
Neste, the world’s largest SAF producer, continues to face challenging market conditions reflected in its stock price, which has fallen by over 40% year-to-date (YTD) in 2025, with UBS downgrading the stock to "neutral" from "buy," citing growing concerns over the company’s near-term performance.
LanzaJet’s largest shareholder – LanzaTech – filed its 2024 earnings, reporting substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern due to recurring net losses and insufficient resources to fund operations for the next 12 months. Share prices fell 20% on the news and are now down 87% YTD at the time of writing.
Delta and United Airlines reported Q1 2025 results, withdrawing or adjusting earnings guidance for 2025 in light of the uncertain economic picture and demand contraction for leisure flights. Both airlines highlighted a focus on reducing flights and staff to cut costs in 2025. Decarbonization plans are clearly a lower priority currently.
Qantas CEO - Vanessa Hudson - warned that the aviation industry’s push to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 could significantly increase airfares, potentially making flying a privilege only available to the wealthy.
IATA Director General - Willie Walsh – for the first time called into question net zero plans for decarbonization of the airline sector by 2050, due to the lack of availability of SAF at an acceptable cost of supply for airlines. Supply and infrastructure costs are clearly significantly higher than expected. He even suggested that some member airlines may start to push back against the timing of SAF mandates in the EU and UK.
In the US, March SAF market price premiums to Jet remained broadly stable resulting in lower SAF prices as Jet prices decreased. Green Star BCS’s proprietary financial models for generic HEFA and EtJ SAF producers demonstrate how margins have decreased for the third month in a row as feedstock costs have increased.
Prices for feedstocks Soybean Oil, Tallow, UCO and DCO all increased again in March, faced with the prospect of less competition from imported UCO as a renewable fuel feedstock.
Green Star BCS’s detailed modelling of medium-to-long-term SAF costs or production, prices and margins based on HEFA and EtJ units, shows an increasingly challenging position for SAF producers in the coming years.