Jet fuel made from tropical fruit gets $3 billion backing

(Bloomberg) -- In Brazil’s Minas Gerais state north of Sao Paulo, more than 200 researchers are racing to commercialize an oil-rich fruit so that it can one day power jetliners.

Agronomists, biotechnicians and automation experts are the brains behind a $3 billion project to plant the little-known macauba palm tree across as many as 144,000 hectares (356,000 acres) of land — an area slightly larger than the city of Los Angeles — and then harvest it for sustainable aviation fuel.


Once the first trees planted start bearing fruit, likely in 2030, energy and biofuels company Acelen Renováveis plans to start processing macauba oil at a biorefinery it’s building in another part of Brazil.

Acelen Renováveis, which is fully owned by Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Capital, hopes to solidify Brazil’s role as one of the world’s top producers of biofuels and a leading supplier of clean jet fuel by industrializing the exotic fruit.

The company says its biorefinery under construction in Bahia state will eventually produce 20,000 barrels of SAF a day. That would translate to a big jump in worldwide output, which in 2025 was 41,000 barrels a day. Most SAF is derived from used cooking oil.

Macauba (pronounced mah-kah-OO-bah) is indigenous to South America and is naturally adapted to the semi-arid regions where Acelen Renováveis is planting its trees. The individual fruit is roughly the size of a small plum and has a fleshy pulp, which is what will be processed. According to the company, macauba can deliver seven to 10 times more oil per hectare than soybeans.

“We call it the fruit of the future,” Victor Barra, director of agribusiness, said in a greenhouse full of macauba clones and seedlings. “It’s literally a power plant, an energy plant.”

The trees in Minas Gerais will grow on degraded pasture so they don’t compete with food production. Brazil has roughly 40 million hectares of degraded pasture. With that potential at hand, Mubadala Capital — the alternative asset management arm of wealth fund Mubadala Investment Co. — has longer-term plans for up to five biorefineries in Brazil.

Macauba farming doesn’t come without challenges. The palm trees only have one harvest a year, and their thorn-ridden trunks and leaves hamper collection. Harvesting the fruit will be more difficult to mechanize than reaping soybeans or sugarcane, Brazil’s two main sources of biofuels, and will rely more on human labor.

Acelen Renováveis has developed fruit separation and oil extraction equipment at the Minas Gerais Agripark research site. The company plans to replicate these at its macauba plantations, so it can ship oil instead of fruit and cut logistics costs.

“You basically need to beat the economics of soybeans and sugarcane,” said Thiago Sinzato, a senior bioenergy analyst at Rystad Energy. “If they can manage that, it’s an incredible project.”

Globally, SAF’s share of all aviation fuel last year was a minuscule 0.6%. Without mandates and policy support, it’s generally too expensive to compete. Brazilian sugar and fuels company Raízen SA experienced financial strain after its bets on SAF, second-generation biofuels and traceable sugar failed to pay off.

Jatropha, an oilseed-bearing shrub once hailed as a miracle crop, highlights the risks of using exotic plants to produce biofuels at scale. More than 250,000 hectares were planted with it in the late 2000s, mostly in China, but it’s unclear how much of that land is still productive and few additional plantations have been announced, according to an April report by BloombergNEF.

“Weak plant-breeding programs resulted in highly variable yields, undermining project economics and leading to widespread project failure,” the report’s authors wrote.

Acelen Renováveis says it has already secured long-term contracts for nearly 90% of its biorefinery production, much of which will come from soybeans and used cooking oil until the macauba plantations reach maturity. The refinery can also shift to making renewable diesel, which has a larger and more mature market than SAF.

The macauba project is driven in part by Europe’s mandate to increase the use of SAF, a policy expected to create demand that far exceeds today’s supplies of used cooking oil and animal fats. The Brazilian market is set to grow as well. Airlines are required to start cutting emissions in 2027 under rules that gradually increase reduction targets to 10% by 2037, with SAF expected to play a central role.

Planting macauba on degraded lands that would require significant investments to grow food will help Acelen Renováveis meet requirements to access these markets. The company needs to secure large areas of farmland, a complex task in Brazil, where fragmented ownership, contested land titles and overlapping claims from traditional and local communities can complicate acquisitions.

“The key challenge is proving, parcel by parcel, that the land it acquires is genuinely degraded,” said Bo Qin, an analyst at BloombergNEF, who added that the company is developing a verification system.

It’s also waiting for the EU to classify macauba as a non-food feedstock. While you won’t find it in a supermarket or listed on the back of a cereal-bar wrapper, macauba oil can potentially be used in foods ranging from margarine to ice cream. Barra says that because its protein content is lower than that of other food crops, it’s not suitable for the food supply chain.

For now, the company collects its fruit from the wild. It mapped out Minas Gerais state to identify 11 stands of superior macauba trees for seed production and cloning. The trees can grow to more than 50 feet and live for a century. The fruit grows in large clusters, resembling oversized bunches of grapes.

The first thing scientists do is test the embryos of each incoming batch. If they are viable, the fruit goes through separation machines to strip the pulp from the seeds. Then two robotic machines use AI to locate the embryos and drill small holes to facilitate germination.

The rest of the macauba gets turned into oil, fertilizer and animal feed for the scientists to test and study. The white kernel at the center of the fruit produces a separate type of oil that is too valuable to burn in engines and will be used for cosmetics.

Acelen Renováveis is collaborating with universities and consultancies to genetically modify the palm tree so that it doesn’t grow as tall, produces bigger fruits with more oil and without the five-inch thorns. The rest of Brazil’s agriculture industry is waiting to see if these drought-resistant trees spread.