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Biofuel is spreading to mainstream 91-octane petrol in Auckland at noon today, as Gull introduces a 10 per cent blend at the first of its 33 stations.
The Australian family-owned company will also sell petrol below $2 a litre at its launch station in Albany.
Aside from a 5c opening discount through the weekend at that station, the company says it will try to keep its Regular Plus biofuel grade 2c a litre below its standard 91-octane petrol, which was selling yesterday for 201.9c a litre. That effort will be helped by a Government tax break on 10 per cent of the fuel.
Although Mobil has started selling a 3 per cent blend of 91-octane petrol in Wellington, that is derived from Brazilian sugarcane, making Gull the first to offer a locally produced biofuel component to a wide field of motorists.
Its feedstock comes from whey, a waste byproduct of Fonterra's dairy factories for which Gull has cornered the market ahead of the proposed introduction of minimum biofuel sales obligations in October.
Gull has been pumping its Force 10 biofuel blend of 98-octane petrol since August last year, despite a warning from car makers after Prime Minister Helen Clark launched the product, that it could seriously damage up to a million secondhand Japanese cars.
General manager Dave Bodger said yesterday that the company was filling 30,000 vehicles a month at 30 stations around the North Island and had not received reports of problems.
Although 91-octane biofuel will bring many more vehicles into the equation, he supplied the Herald with a draft international fuel charter of car manufacturing associations, including Japan's, to back up his confidence.
It states: "Virtually all vehicles with spark ignition engines are compatible ... with petrol [petrol] containing up to 10 per cent ethanol; exceptions may include vintage and antique vehicles ... "
Motor Trade Association spokesman Andy Cuming, representing car dealers and service station owners, confirmed receiving no reports of engine damage from biofuel through his members' call centre.
But Automobile Association technical manager Jack Biddle, despite acknowledging that his call centre had no reports of any problems either, urged motorists to follow manufacturers' advice about fuel suitability.
Motor Industry Association chief Perry Kerr, representing car-makers, said he was discussing with local brand representatives an "apparent conflict" between the draft charter and advice from the Japan Automobile Manufacturers' Association that it could not guarantee the safe use of biofuel blends higher than 3 per cent in secondhand imports.
