ePURE elects Alarik Sandrup as president amid EU energy push

ePURE on June 4 elected Alarik Sandrup as president for a two-year term, elevating Lantmännen’s public and regulatory affairs chief as the European renewable ethanol association tries to turn warmer language in Brussels into harder policy for domestic production. Fritz Georg von Graevenitz was named vice-president, giving the group a new leadership team as it presses its case on transport, energy security and industrial competitiveness.

Sandrup replaced Antonio Vallespir of Vertex Bioenergy, who had held the presidency since 2024. ePURE said Sandrup is also president of the Swedish Bioenergy Association and a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry, credentials that underline the association’s effort to frame renewable ethanol as part of Europe’s broader industrial base rather than only a transport fuel. The change matters because the next phase of EU rulemaking will shape how ethanol is treated in post-2030 transport and energy policy, including market access, carbon accounting and the role of biofuels in low-carbon transport pathways.

The association has been arguing that renewable ethanol can serve several policy goals at once, including transport de-fossilisation, energy independence, food security and competitiveness. That position puts domestic ethanol production at the center of a wider debate in Brussels, where industry groups are fighting to protect homegrown supply chains while regulators tighten sustainability and emissions rules across transport. Sandrup’s appointment gives ePURE a leader who is already steeped in those regulatory fights through his role at Lantmännen and his work in Swedish bioenergy policy.

Von Graevenitz reinforced that message by arguing that Europe needs to break dependence on imported fossil resources and that renewable ethanol is an immediate, cost-effective and socially inclusive domestic resource. For ePURE, which represents European renewable ethanol producers to EU institutions, industry stakeholders, academia and the public, the leadership shift is less about internal housekeeping than about sharpening the sector’s pitch: treat domestic ethanol as strategic infrastructure, not a compromise fuel. That framing is likely to shape the association’s push on trade, feedstock sustainability and the rules that will govern transport decarbonisation after 2030.