Fuji Vegetable Oil on Monday celebrated the completion of its third refinery at the Fuji plant on Brampton Road, an addition that will allow Fuji to double its annual production of specialty oils and fats from 5,000 truckloads to 10,000.
The high-tech refinery removes fatty acids and impurities from vegetable oil, allowing Fuji to customize the product to each client’s specifications.
The first step in the refining process is bleaching the oil, followed by a vacuum distillation in the refinery tower. The 126-foot distillation tower, which took a year to build, is fully automated and controlled by computer from the central operations room.
The major equipment for the $15 million project was designed and built in the Atlanta office of DeSmet Ballestra, a company that engineers and supplies equipment for oil and fat refining plants.
Construction was completed using 100 percent local parts and labor, said Fuji president Mickey Sakai, who commended Mahany Construction, Thomas & Hutton, MacAljon Group, VOS Electric, Action Insulation and American Refrigeration for working as a cohesive team to bring the project to completion on time and within budget.
The new addition will level
the playing field for Fuji with its competitors, said plant manager Greg Phillips.
“Our raw product comes in to the port in tankers, but —until now — we didn’t have the refining capacity to accept a full vessel at one time,” he said. “So we were paying full-vessel prices for a tanker that was less than fully loaded.
“This expansion means we can take a full tanker and produce more product in the same time frame,” Phillips said. “That translates into more revenue for us, for the ports and for the trucks that transport our product.”
Once it is operating at full capacity, Phillips said, he expects the addition to generate six to eight additional jobs. Fuji currently employs 106 people in Savannah, with an average hourly rate of $24.75.
While not as visible to the public as the large container ships arriving at Georgia Ports, the Fuji refinery is a significant contributor to Savannah’s economy, paying $236,000 in port fees, $800,000 in county property taxes and creating a $9 million payroll annually.
In addition to supplying companies in the United States, the Savannah plant — Fuji’s only refinery in the United States — ships to 17 foreign countries on four continents, with a customer base that includes such confectionary groups as Hershey, Nestle, Mars and Cadbury. It is also a major supplier to Ramen Noodle companies in the U.S.
Since its inception in Savannah in 1991, Fuji Vegetable Oil has grown from an initial investment of $15 million to well over $100 million, with annual revenues of $206.5 million, a number forecast to double by 2017.
ABOUT FUJI VEGETABLE OIL
Fuji Vegetable Oil, Inc. is the American arm of the Fuji Oil Group headquartered in Osaka, Japan. Fuji Oil Group, including seven companies in Japan and 19 subsidiaries around the globe, provides everything from raw materials to fully processed products ready for customer use. The Fuji Oil Group was founded in 1950.