From a garage batch to Green Energy Biofuel

The beginning

Where it started

BioJoe Renwick comes from a long line of entrepreneurs in Winnsboro, SC. Both his father and grandfather owned businesses in town. Joe’s first business was a landscaping company, which he sold when he moved to North Augusta with his wife, Dr. Beth Renwick, who was completing her residency in emergency medicine. He kept the sturdy 2003 Chevy diesel pickup he had bought for the landscaping business, and it would come in handy later.

While living in North Augusta, Joe worked at Wachovia Bank until the banking industry collapsed in 2007. He then took a job selling pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment (tanks, pumps and valves), where he gained sales experience and a deep understanding of fluid process design. When the company’s sole owner passed away, Joe found himself unemployed.

Through extensive research and countless hours, Joe produced his first batch of biodiesel in his garage. “Within a few weeks and a few hundred dollars, I was making fuel from waste cooking oil recycled from the local tapas restaurant ‘The Bee’s Knees’ in downtown Augusta,” Joe explains. By the time Beth finished her residency, he had made eight batches. After testing the fuel in his own truck, he knew he was onto something big.

Joe and Beth moved back to Winnsboro, where Beth joined Lexington Medical Center’s Emergency Department. “Upon our first night home, we had some old friends over we hadn’t seen in years. We discussed future plans for Joe and decided: biodiesel was the path forward,” Beth remembers.

2008

Midlands Biofuels opens for business

BioJoe and his first business partner, former Citadel football teammate Brandon Spence, started Midlands Biofuels, LLC in 2008. BioJoe understood the biodiesel process, and Brandon, a Small Business Specialist at the Department of Commerce, knew how to build a business from the ground up. They quickly found about 80% of the processing equipment they needed, paying with credit cards and even a loan against the diesel truck that started it all. That first equipment was still in use in the Winnsboro plant ten years later.

They were accepted into Midlands Technical College’s Business Accelerator Program, with a brand new 15,000 square foot facility waiting for them. But when the building and zoning departments learned they would store used cooking oil in unheated carbon steel tanks inside the building, the plan was shut down on the spot. “We didn’t even get to the part telling them we used methanol, with similar flammability as gasoline, to mix under heat with a strong caustic chemicals (think of Lye) to convert the oil into fuel and then distill the methanol back out of it like an alcohol still,” BioJoe laughs.

The next week they found an abandoned building on Main Street in Winnsboro, negotiated terms and moved in three days later. They qualified for a NASA Rural Area Development Program and proved out their trademarked Boilerless Technology™, which heats biodiesel to over 230°F and recovers more than 94% of the methanol after the reaction at a fraction of the cost of a traditional boiler. Traditional boilers are dangerous and rely on a highly regulated steam system. The plant ran on Boilerless Technology for four years.

2008 to 2010

Weathering the storm

By then the partners’ credit cards were maxed out, and BioJoe had worked 14 months without pay. Using the business plan from the accelerator application, they secured a $140,000 loan from First Citizens Bank against roughly $27,000 of equipment. “The day the loan closed the stock market crashed. We were there before the bank opened and signed the document before the word hit the street.”

A year later, in 2009, the federal government cut the $1 per gallon biodiesel production subsidy. All seven fully operational biodiesel plants in South Carolina went bankrupt, and Midlands Biofuels was the only company to weather the storm. “We had never failed at anything before and had been taught that perseverance and discipline pay off in the long run from our time at The Citadel, and so we kept plugging away.”

2012

A new business model

While searching for a new partner, BioJoe kept the business going with the support of Dr. Beth Renwick, who helped with all sorts of tasks between hospital shifts. In 2012 Beth officially joined Midlands Biofuels as majority owner. Together they reworked the business, turning it from an oil recycler and biodiesel maker into a large-scale processor of waste from the biodiesel industry itself.

Solving a wastewater problem at his own plant, BioJoe realized he could solve the same problem for every plant he could afford to haul from. Partnering with biodiesel plants across Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia gave the company enough volume for a new proprietary secondary process that stabilized it through uncertain years.

A layoff aversion grant let the company work with SC MEP and strategic planning firm Blue Wing to find new markets and products. “The first year, we grew revenue two times the previous year and have nearly doubled every year since.”

Giving back

Education and community

Sustainability and social responsibility have always guided the company. Working with colleges and universities, BioJoe looks for interns to teach about the process, hoping to hire them after graduation. Over the years, the company has offered more than 100 internships.

The company’s Bio4Edu program supports local schools through their bus fleets, donations to schools and school projects, and lessons about environmental sustainability. In 2013 the company was named SC Outstanding Business of the Year for environmental stewardship, in 2015 SC Business of the Year by the SC School Board of Education, and in 2018 the program was a finalist in the Carolinas Green Sustainable Business Awards.

2016 to 2018

Green Energy Biofuel

In 2016 Midlands Biofuels expanded into Tennessee by purchasing an oil processing plant in Knoxville, and changed its name to Green Energy Biofuel. “Although we are proud of our ‘Midlands’ roots, we decided to re-brand ourselves as Green Energy Biofuel LLC in 2016 because the new name is not geographically limiting and represents our growth as a company,” BioJoe explains. In the next two years the company quadrupled in size, adding employees and processing capability in Winnsboro and Knoxville.

In the summer of 2018, the company purchased a third processing plant just outside Aiken, SC, planned to process 60 million gallons of used cooking oil a year and employ up to 40 local people. Its rail spur sits below a major switching yard, cutting shipping costs by about 40% and moving up to 25,000 gallons per rail load compared with about 6,200 gallons per highway tanker. With capacity to process 200,000 gallons of product a day, it serves customers as far away as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Louisiana and Europe.

2020

ReSoil and a landfill-free operation

Growth meant more organic food waste and water removed during production. Looking for a solution, the company turned to composting, and when the chance came to purchase ReSoil, it was an easy decision. Within a year Green Energy Biofuel was landfill free, and since taking over operations it has composted more than 17,000,000 pounds of waste.

2022

Recognition and zero waste

2022 was a big year. The Carolina Recycling Association named Green Energy Biofuel Recycler of the Year, employees voted it one of the Best Places to Work in South Carolina, and it became the state’s #1 Fastest Growing Small Company. The new depackaging equipment also started operation, helping some of the largest food companies in the US divert waste from landfills by composting the organics and recycling the packaging.

From its humble beginnings, Green Energy Biofuel is proud of where it stands today, and with growing operations and staff, the sky is the limit.