Axens licenses Vegan HEFA tech for SAF projects in Caribbean, Africa

Axens on June 10 said it will license its Vegan HEFA technology to Dragonfly for several sustainable aviation fuel production facilities in the Caribbean and Africa, a deal that pushes SAF project development beyond the established North American and European hubs. The arrangement centers on modular process units and a technology package Axens says is designed to help Dragonfly move renewable feedstock projects from concept toward financing, permitting and offtake discussions.

Axens said the Dragonfly sites will run on used cooking oils, waste animal fats and other vegetable oils. Under the collaboration, Axens will provide integrated catalyst and adsorbent solutions, proprietary equipment, and operational support and training services. Axens has long described Vegan as a flexible pathway for SAF and renewable diesel production from a wide range of lipid feedstocks, and the new agreement extends that pitch into regions where developers are looking to build local supply chains around waste oils and fats.

Dragonfly’s model gives the deal more commercial weight than a simple license sale. The company says it bundles feedstock, technology and delivery into a unified platform, co-invests as an equity partner and has engineered a modular HEFA refinery built in standardized 32,000-tonne-per-year formats. Dragonfly also says it has secured a 40-year supply agreement totaling 350,000 tonnes per year across 35 sites for its first 10 refineries, a structure that suggests the company is trying to lock in feedstock visibility before plants move into execution.

The timing matters because Axens has already used Vegan to show commercial traction elsewhere. In 2024, Axens said three new Vegan units were expected to start in the following months. In September 2025, Axens said a 100% SAF unit based on Vegan had started up in Asia, demonstrating that the platform had already moved from licensing into operation outside the West. Axens then announced a separate collaboration with XCF Global on May 20, 2026, followed by a June 3, 2026, SAF facility partnership with Green Sky Capital in Egypt for a 200,000-tonnes-per-annum plant that Axens said would be the first SAF production site in Egypt and across Africa.

Taken together, the Dragonfly agreement signals that SAF build-outs are becoming more global and more modular. Caribbean and African projects are increasingly being framed around local waste streams, lower-carbon logistics and replicated HEFA units rather than one-off flagship refineries. For lenders, airlines and policymakers, the test is no longer whether the technology exists, but whether licensed platforms like Vegan can keep turning feedstock access into bankable capacity at scale.