Darling Ingredients Inc. is the international leader in converting edible and inedible bio nutrients from animal origin into nutritional, safe and sustainable food, feed and fuel ingredients for a growing, global population. Darling has over 260 processing plants on five continents with sales and distribution offices throughout the world and is the only publicly traded company in our industry (NYSE/DAR). They are headquartered in Irving, Texas, with approximately 16,000 dedicated employees worldwide providing services and products to an international market

Suann Guthrie, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Sustainability and Global Communications, Phone: (469) 214-8202, Email: suann.guthrie@darlingii.com

Ethan Carter, Director of Sustainability, Phone: (972),657-7921 or Email: ethan.carter@darlingii.com

The Company has a 52/53 week fiscal year ending on the Saturday nearest December 31.

Once it is at our facility, it is put through strainers to remove contaminants (grill bits and debris), heated to remove water and kill off any pathogens, and marketed as a commodity whose value is tracked and published daily. From there, the refined material is shipped by railcar to our Diamond Green Diesel plant located in Norco, Louisiana. It’s used in the production of renewable diesel that we make ourselves. The facility is on pace to produce over 600 million gallons of oil this year alone

Virtually all the used cooking oil our company collects from restaurants, supermarkets and other food service establishments is used to produce renewable diesel. Demand for sustainable fuel is high, and used cooking oil is an inexpensive, sustainable feedstock. The used cooking oil is dewatered and cleaned at our processing facilities and used in the production of renewable diesel (we co-own a renewable diesel refinery with Valero Energy in Louisiana). Co-products of renewable diesel production are renewable propane, renewable butane and naphtha, which is used in solvents, paint thinners, varnish, plastics and more.

Processed used cooking oil can also be used as a nutritional supplement for animal feed.

Animal by-products are parts of an animal that are not considered edible and wouldn’t be otherwise used for consumption by butcher shops, supermarkets and other processing facilities. These are secondary or incidental product of animal production that materials are solid, organic and can be repurposed into ingredients in various consumer products.

Most countries, particularly Western countries, have a meat-heavy diet. Globally, 258 million metric tons of meat is produced annually, with an average of 75 pounds consumed per person each year. In the U.S., the amount is significantly higher – almost 200 pounds per person, according to recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Roughly 50-60% of an animal is consumed in Western cultures. The unconsumed fat, skin, bones and other inedible material is a significant amount and must be handled in a safe manner.

What is left after being sold as food or consumed is considered meat by-product. This would include animal bones, fat, skin, blood, feathers and internal organs.

According to the National Renderers Association, 1.92 billion pounds of meat scrap, fat, bone, expired meat products and used cooking oil are used each year in U.S. grocery stores alone.

On a global scale, 258 million metric tons of meat (beef, poultry, swine) is produced annually for human consumption, which yields about 100 million metric tons of meat by-products that are not consumed.

In Western cultures, the inedible material is primarily repurposed into nutritional animal feed ingredients or feedstock for biofuel production. It also is processed into fatty acids, proteins, minerals, gelatin, collagen peptides, plasma, oils and more that are used in a large variety of products used by businesses and households worldwide.

Bones and fat can be cooked down into oils, fats and protein meals that are critical to a healthy animal diet. The fats and oils are also used to produce biofuel, and can also be used to make cleansers, soaps, plastics, solvents, industrial coatings, fertilizers and much more.

Feather meal can be used in animal diets, as can processed blood.

Organic fertilizer can be produced from meat by-products.

In food-grade facilities that are carefully monitored for regulatory compliance, select by-product from beef, hog and fish can be cooked down to provide gelatin and collagen peptides used in a vast assortment of food, pharmaceutical, sports nutrition and cosmetic applications. Insulin, hemoglobin are just two examples of pharmaceutical use for humans.

It’s a process that repurposes co-products(also called by-products) that would otherwise go to waste from the “meat we don’t eat.” By rendering specific materials that many North American consumers would consider inedible, such as certain fats, bones and proteins, renderers provide clean and safe rendered material used to develop sustainable new products while reducing overall food waste.

• In September 2009, Darling Ingredients announced a partnership with Valero Energy Corporation to form a 50/50 joint venture to build a facility to produce renewable diesel adjacent to Valero’s St. Charles, Louisiana refinery. The joint venture was formalized on Jan. 21, 2011, and operations began in July 2012.
• Today, with production at both St. Charles, Louisiana, and Port Arthur, Texas, Diamond Green Diesel has the capacity to produce about 1.2 billion gallons of renewable diesel, making it the largest renewable diesel producer in North America and the second-largest in the world.
• In January 2023, Darling Ingredients announced the companies reached a final investment decision on a sustainable aviation fuel project at the Diamond Green Diesel Port Arthur plant, expected to come online in 2025.

Renewable diesel has a different molecular structure from biodiesel, which is a methyl-ester primarily made fromoybeans oil. Renewable diesel is a true hydrocarbon, just like diesel, and can be used anywhere diesel is used without modification to engines or pipelines.  It has an energy density to calue equivalent to ulta-low sulfur diesel (ULSD), which is a cleaner burning, lower emissionb fuel.  It performs well in both cold and warm climates.

• Since renewable diesel uses a hydro treating process which creates a true hydrocarbon, it can be transported via the existing petroleum pipeline system versus biodiesel which has cold flow challenges. Biodiesel must be trucked or railed and requires special tanks at the distributor location.
• Renewable diesel meets diesel fuel quality specifications (D-975) while biodiesel is not a true hydrocarbon and can only be included at a 5% blend into D-975.
• The feedstock for renewable diesel can be animal fats, refined cooking oil (yellow grease), and/ or distilled corn oil which are substantially lower in cost than refined soybean oil used to produce biodiesel.
• Renewable diesel has a higher RIN multiplier value (1.7 x) versus (1.5 x) biodiesel.

Inediable meat and fat are collected from collected from supermarkets, butchers, meat processors and other food service establishments in North America and trasported to a rendering operation, such as Darling Ingredients' network of plants. There, the by-products are ground cooked to separate the fats from the protein material.  These recyceld fats are used to prduce biofuels

The restaurant industry in the U.S. generates an estimated 2.3 billion pounds of used cooking oil annually. Companies like Darling Ingredients provide restaurants, grocers and other food service establishments with storage tanks or bins to store used fryer oil. During regularly scheduled visits, the service company pumps the oil into dedicated trucks and transports it to their processing plants, where it is cleaned of debris or solid matter and heated to evaporate any water.  The used cooking oil is transported to our Diamond Green Diesel facilities, where we manufacture the renewable diesel.

The used cooking oil and inedible animal fats are pretreated to remove impurities. Next, these fats are processed into renewable diesel by:

• Hydrotreating: Using high pressure hydrogen to remove the oxygen (which is converted to water).
• Isomerization: A chemical process that changes the structure of the molecules without changing the number of atoms. This enables the fuel to be used in cold weather.

Fractionation: A chemical process to separate the liquid into finished products

Because of its molecular similarity to traditional diesel, renewable diesel can be distributed using existing pipelines used to transport petroleum products, no changes are needed. 

Because of its molecular similarity to traditional diesel, renewable diesel can be distributed using existing pipelines used to transport petroleum products, no changes are needed.