Construction of the UK’s first world-scale bioethanol plant at the Wilton International site on Teesside will be marked today by David Miliband, environment minister. Financial Times

The project, which will cost around £250m, will create a plant with an annual capacity to produce more than 400 million litres of bioethanol, a renewable fuel produced using farm crops.

It is being developed by Ensus, a UK-based business backed by global private equity groups. Commercial operation will begin in 2009, with the aim of supplying about a third of the UK’s expected bioethanol needs by 2010.