Grease-to-biodiesel firm eyes LI expansion

To one Long Island business at least, grease is good.

Long Island's largest cooking-oil (read grease) recycling plant has been operating since January, and already its owners are talking about expanding their plant in Hicksville and hiring more workers.

Grease Lightning, owned by Newark-based Unity Fuels Llc, is converting about 100,000 gallons of used cooking oil a week from hundreds of cooking facilities on the Island -- restaurants and other operations -- and recycling it, virtually all into biodiesel for vehicles.

The privately owned company, which has a similar facility in Newark, does not disclose sales or profits. But Jeff DeWeese, Unity Fuels' managing partner, said, "Our plans are to expand" the Hicksville plant.

Malek Jalal, another managing partner, said the company now employs about 20 people in Hicksville.

"We want to have about 100" by the end of 2013, Jalal said.

DeWeese said Unity opened here because of the Island's large number of restaurants and other cooking operations, which he estimated to number about 9,000, based on industry surveys. There are 13,000 in the Newark area; about 1,000 of those are Unity customers, DeWeese said.

Grease Lightning provides customers with free storage containers, collects the used cooking oil and processes it into recycled vegetable oil. It is then shipped out by rail, which is next to the Hicksville plant, to be converted into a diesel fuel substitute called biodiesel.

Kevin Rooney, executive director of the Oil Heat Institute of Long Island, said he believes Grease Lightning is the largest such facility in Nassau and Suffolk. "What they're doing is not unique" across the country, "but they're going into it in a big way."