New storage facility a game changer for Simply Green

100 percent waste vegetable oil biodiesel will come from within 150 miles of Portsmouth, making the product as local as it is environmentally friendly

Five years after being founded in a Stratham farmhouse, Simply Green Biofuels — already millions of gallons to its ever-growing credit — is poised to roll out its latest game-changer.

The company this past week announced it would soon open a retrofitted storage operation in North Hampton, the first of its kind in the Granite State. Featuring two tanks totaling 193,000 gallons of storage space, the new facility at 227 Atlantic Ave. will significantly expand the Seacoast’s supply of biofuels. And 100 percent waste vegetable oil biodiesel will come from within 150 miles of Portsmouth, making the product as local as it is environmentally friendly.

“It’s a huge announcement for us,” said Simply Green General Manager Joel Bobbett. “No one stores that amount — not even close to that amount — of locally manufactured biodiesel anywhere in the state. This new facility gives us the ability to cover the entire state. It’s a whole different ballgame.”

While the product itself will only be made available for wholesale through other, mostly local retailers, Bobbett said the facility’s capacity to custom blend the green fuel should help make it more readily and easily available.

“Basically, any conceivable percentage of biofuel blend that a customer wants, they can get now,” Bobbett said. “What this does is it takes away the excuse that it’s not available in the quantity or the ratio that people want. And we think this is going to help grow the market here in New Hampshire exponentially.”

Bobbett said the new storage facility should give Simply Green a delivery capacity of more than 20 million gallons of American-made fuel for retailers of all sizes. That’s 20 million fewer gallons of petroleum shipped from foreign sources.