Lighthouse Green Fuels has submitted its application to build a sustainable aviation fuel refinery at Seal Sands on Teesside. Its developer has previously put the cost of the plant at more than £2bn.

The application is for a Development Consent Order, the planning process used for nationally significant infrastructure projects. It is now waiting for the Planning Inspectorate to decide whether to accept it for examination.

The plant would turn sustainably sourced biomass into jet fuel. Its owner, Alfanar, says it has spent about £90m on the project so far and is aiming to make a final investment decision and complete its financing at the end of 2027.

In September the company also published analysis by Arup estimating that the refinery could generate more than £8bn of gross value added across the UK over four years of construction and 20 years of operation. The figure measures economic activity over 24 years. It is not the cost of building the plant.

Before a final investment decision, the project needs planning consent, financing, supply and customer contracts and a decision on whether it will connect to Teesside's carbon-capture network.

The plant would sit at Seal Sands, on the north bank of the Tees estuary.

Lighthouse Green Fuels says it would process about 1.5m tonnes of sustainably sourced biomass a year into around 180m litres of sustainable aviation fuel and 30m litres of renewable naphtha.

The core refinery would occupy about 270 acres of brownfield industrial land. The wider project area, including access routes and utility corridors, covers about 220 hectares.

The developer is LGF Projects Limited. Companies House records show Alfanar Energy Limited holds at least 75 per cent of its shares and voting rights. Lighthouse Green Fuels describes the business as wholly owned by Alfanar Group, the Saudi engineering and construction group.

Alfanar has backed Lighthouse Green Fuels for several years, which is why the name is familiar. The scheme now before planners is a redesigned project.

An earlier version was planned on a nearby site and would have turned material derived from municipal solid waste into aviation fuel. That scheme was withdrawn.

In 2025 Alfanar set up a new project company, LGF Projects Limited, and moved the scheme to a site about 500 metres north. It also switched the main raw material to sustainably sourced biomass.

In September 2025 the government directed that the new proposal be treated as a nationally significant infrastructure project. The Planning Inspectorate therefore examines the application before the Secretary of State makes the final decision.

Since then, Arup has been appointed to lead the planning work. Worley completed the project's front-end engineering design at the end of May 2026. In July, Lighthouse Green Fuels announced a land option over the Seal Sands site, and Alfanar said it expected to commit another £100m before making its final investment decision.

None of these steps commits the money needed to build the refinery. That comes with the final investment decision.

The immediate next step is for the application to be accepted for examination. If accepted, it moves to pre-examination and then formal examination. The Planning Inspectorate then makes a recommendation to the Secretary of State.

Lighthouse Green Fuels has said it aims to start construction in 2028. Its current project roadmap expects commercial operations to begin in 2033.

Commercial preparations are running alongside planning. Lighthouse Green Fuels has appointed Crédit Agricole CIB as financial adviser and says work on the project's financing is under way. It says it has signed outline terms with major biomass suppliers and is progressing agreements with potential buyers of the fuel.

Government policy is also creating demand for sustainable aviation fuel. The UK's sustainable aviation fuel mandate took effect in 2025 and requires a rising share of aviation fuel supplied in the UK to be sustainable. The required share rises to 10 per cent in 2030 and 22 per cent in 2040. The mandate does not decide which plants supply that fuel or at what price.

The government is also designing a support mechanism intended to give early sustainable aviation fuel plants more predictable revenues.

Lighthouse Green Fuels says it applied to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero in April 2026 for a connection to the East Coast Cluster, the carbon-capture network being developed on Teesside.

The company says the plant could run without carbon capture. A connection would allow it to send carbon dioxide from the production process for permanent storage under the North Sea, cutting the fuel's lifecycle emissions further.

The department is running a selection process for projects seeking access to the expanded Teesside network. Lighthouse Green Fuels has not yet been named on a shortlist.

Arup's analysis estimates about £1.9bn of spending through UK supply chains during construction, including about £1.3bn of direct construction spending in Teesside between 2029 and 2032. It forecasts peak on-site construction employment of about 2,200 people in the second year of building.

Once the plant is running, Arup estimates it would support 4,080 jobs across the UK each year from 2040, including about 720 in Teesside. More than 320 of those would be permanent roles on the site.

The Planning Inspectorate must now decide whether to accept the application for examination. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero expects to shortlist projects seeking access to the East Coast Cluster this autumn and identify those entering negotiations by the end of 2026. Lighthouse Green Fuels must then complete its financing and supply and customer agreements before its planned final investment decision at the end of 2027.