Market Definition and Catalyst Function
Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is a type of fuel produced from renewable resources with a lower carbon footprint compared to traditional aviation fuel, designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the environmental impact of air travel. SAF can be derived from various sustainable feedstocks such as waste oils, agricultural residues, and non-food crops. The production process typically involves converting these feedstocks into a liquid fuel usable in existing aircraft engines without modification. One of the key advantages of SAF is its ability to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions compared to conventional aviation fuel—estimated at up to 80% over the lifecycle, including production, distribution, and combustion.

The production of SAF utilizing used cooking oil (UCO) as a renewable bio-waste resource holds immense potential for promoting sustainability in the aviation sector. This report studies the UCO-to-SAF catalyst market.

The catalyst‘s function is two-stage. Hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) removes oxygen from triglyceride molecules, converting fatty acid chains into linear paraffins while releasing water and carbon oxides. The 72.2% share held by HDO catalysts reflects its role as the primary conversion step: without effective deoxygenation, the feedstock cannot be upgraded to hydrocarbon fuel. Hydrocracking and isomerization catalysts subsequently branch and rearrange the linear paraffins to achieve the cold-flow properties required for jet fuel—a critical specification because linear paraffins crystallize at altitudes where jet fuel must remain liquid.

According to the QYResearch report Global UCO to SAF Catalyst Market Report 2024-2030, the market size is projected to reach USD 734.04 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 63.2% . This figure is internally inconsistent with the 2024 base year and with independent QYResearch coverage placing 2024 revenue at USD 60.9 million and 2030 at USD 1.15 billion . The most plausible interpretation is that the original report contained a unit error and that the intended figure is USD 734.04 million by 2030, consistent with the order of magnitude of the revised forecast. A separate 2025 QYResearch-sourced estimate places the market at USD 61 million in 2025, rising to USD 1.23 billion (RMB 123 billion) by 2032 at the same 63.2% CAGR . The directional consensus is unambiguous: this is a micro-market today that is forecast to grow at extraordinary rates as SAF production scales from less than 1% of aviation fuel toward mandated blending targets.

In terms of product type, Hydrodeoxygenation is the largest segment, holding a 72.2% share. In terms of application, Commercial Aircraft is the largest segment, holding a 94.7% share.

Competitive Landscape and Supply Concentration
The UCO-to-SAF catalyst market is a high technical barrier market with limited suppliers and high concentration. The top five players are Shell Catalysts & Technologies, Topsoe, UOP, Albemarle, and Advanced Refining Technologies (ART), taking a combined global revenue market share of 71%. Other suppliers including Sinopec and Axens hold smaller shares. In 2023, the global top four players held approximately 62.0% of revenue.

Topsoe has emerged as the most visible catalyst supplier in the UCO-to-SAF project pipeline. Its HydroFlex technology has been selected for the Chuangui New Energy plant in Qinzhou, Guangxi, China. The facility reached final investment decision in December 2024, construction is underway, and operations are expected to commence in December 2026. At full capacity, the plant will process 300,000 tonnes per year of UCO feedstock into 100,000 tonnes per year of SAF and renewable diesel, with expected annual emission avoidance of approximately 800,000 tonnes CO2e . This project is consequential for the catalyst market because it represents a commercial-scale reference for HydroFlex in the Chinese market—a geography identified as a new growth point alongside Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Topsoe‘s second significant award is with Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) in Mumbai, India. The project involves adapting an existing kerosene hydrotreating unit with 4,000 metric tonnes per day capacity to co-process a feed comprising 5% UCO and 95% conventional feedstock, with commissioning planned for the end of 2026 . The co-processing model is strategically important: it allows refiners to introduce renewable content without building dedicated SAF plants, lowering the capital barrier and potentially accelerating catalyst demand across the existing refining fleet.

Shell Catalysts & Technologies maintains its leadership position through both catalyst supply and technology licensing. In June 2026, Shell signed a technology license agreement with ENGIE for the France KerEAUzen e-SAF project, covering the Shell XTL Process—including Reverse Water-Gas Shift, Fischer-Tropsch, and Wax Hydroconversion . While this project uses captured CO2 and green hydrogen rather than UCO, it demonstrates Shell‘s broader positioning across the SAF technology spectrum. For UCO-based SAF specifically, Shell‘s catalyst portfolio and its integration with hydroprocessing licensing give it a qualification advantage with refiners that already operate Shell-licensed units.

UOP (Honeywell) and Albemarle occupy parallel leadership positions. Honeywell‘s July 2026 acquisition of Johnson Matthey‘s catalyst technologies business for GBP 1.325 billion (approximately RMB 12.1 billion) expanded its portfolio across SAF, blue hydrogen, and blue ammonia, complementing UOP‘s existing hydroprocessing and Fischer-Tropsch capabilities . This consolidation signals that the large catalyst suppliers view SAF as a strategic growth market and are willing to commit capital to broaden their technology offerings.

Advanced Refining Technologies (ART), a joint venture between W.R. Grace and Chevron, holds a position in hydroprocessing catalysts with particular strength in residue upgrading—a capability that translates to contaminant tolerance in UCO feeds.

Market Drivers
Regulatory mandates constitute the primary demand catalyst. The regulatory landscape surrounding SAF is rapidly evolving and provides the bedrock for the market‘s exponential expansion. Over the past six years, the number of legally binding policies supporting SAF development has increased from 1 between 2013 and 2017 to 22 in 2022. With increasing numbers of countries pledging net-zero by 2050, low-carbon aviation is becoming a priority area for new policies and environmental strategies. The EU‘s ReFuelEU Aviation regulation and the UK‘s SAF mandate create legally binding blending obligations that force fuel suppliers to procure SAF, which in turn drives catalyst demand.

Project pipeline development translates mandates into catalyst orders. The Chuangui project in China and BPCL‘s co-processing project in India are concrete examples of FID-stage investments that will require catalyst loading at commissioning . The global SAF demand trajectory—projected to grow from 344 million gallons to 7.6 billion gallons over the next decade—implies a corresponding multiplication of catalyst demand, albeit with a lag as plants are built and commissioned .

Feedstock economics favor UCO-based pathways in the near term. UCO is a waste-derived feedstock with established collection infrastructure and lower lifecycle carbon intensity than purpose-grown oil crops. For refiners and project developers seeking to meet mandates with the most carbon-efficient feedstock available, UCO-based hydrotreating is the most mature pathway, and its catalysts are therefore the first to see scaled demand.

A countervailing driver is the reality of SAF production shortfalls. IATA estimates global SAF production at approximately 2.4 million tonnes in 2026, representing just 0.8% of aviation fuel use and costing airlines USD 4.3 billion . IATA‘s Director General described the trajectory as “another disappointing year,” citing “ineffectively sequenced government policies and oil companies‘ manifest lack of interest.” This shortfall has a dual implication for the catalyst market: it constrains near-term catalyst demand relative to the mandates, but it also intensifies pressure on governments to strengthen incentives and on fuel suppliers to accelerate project development—both of which would ultimately increase catalyst orders.

Market Challenges and Technical Difficulties
The contaminant tolerance requirement constitutes the central technical difficulty distinguishing UCO-to-SAF catalysts from conventional hydrotreating formulations, and it explains both the market‘s concentration and its qualification barriers.

UCO is not a clean feedstock. It contains alkali metals (sodium, potassium) from cooking processes, phosphorus from phospholipids, free fatty acids from hydrolysis, and trace metals from packaging and processing equipment. These contaminants poison conventional hydrotreating catalysts: alkali metals neutralize acidic sites, phosphorus accumulates on the catalyst surface, and metals deposit irreversibly in the pore structure. A catalyst formulated for petroleum-derived feedstocks may achieve acceptable cycle lengths on a clean UCO stream but deactivate rapidly when the feedstock quality varies—a reality in waste oil collection systems where sourcing spans thousands of restaurants and food processors.

The top suppliers‘ competitive advantage lies in their ability to formulate catalysts with guard beds and graded catalyst systems that capture contaminants before they reach the primary HDO catalyst. This systems-level approach—rather than a single catalyst formulation—is what the project references validate. Topsoe‘s HydroFlex, for example, is licensed as an integrated process with proprietary equipment and catalysts, not as a drop-in catalyst replacement . The qualification burden for a new entrant is therefore not merely demonstrating activity on a synthetic feed but proving cycle length and regeneration performance across the realistic variability of commercial UCO supply.

A second technical difficulty concerns the cold-flow specification. Jet fuel must remain liquid at the low temperatures encountered at cruising altitude, typically specified as a freeze point below -47°C. The linear paraffins produced by HDO have freeze points well above this threshold, making the isomerization step essential. The hydrocracking and isomerization catalysts must achieve sufficient branching to meet the freeze point specification while minimizing yield loss to light ends. This trade-off is governed by the catalyst‘s acidity and the process conditions, and it is a specification that refiners scrutinize during catalyst selection. A catalyst that meets the freeze point but produces excessive light ends erodes the SAF yield, directly affecting project economics.

Co-processing compatibility is an emerging technical challenge with market implications. BPCL‘s Mumbai project will co-process 5% UCO with 95% conventional feedstock in an existing kerosene hydrotreating unit . This approach lowers the capital barrier to SAF production, but it places unique demands on the catalyst: it must tolerate the UCO contaminants at low concentration while maintaining performance on the conventional feed, and it must not compromise the properties of the conventional jet fuel produced alongside the renewable portion. If co-processing becomes a widespread pathway—and its lower capital cost makes it attractive for refiners seeking incremental renewable volume—the catalyst market could shift from dedicated UCO-to-SAF formulations toward catalysts optimized for mixed-feed operation.

A structural observation concerns the geographic mismatch between production and consumption. Production of UCO-to-SAF catalysts is concentrated in the USA and Europe, while consumption is widely spread in the global market. The market in emerging countries—China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East—is projected to be a new growth point, while the European market is more modest due to stable light oil demand . This mismatch means that catalyst suppliers must support projects in geographies where they may not have manufacturing or technical service presence, and it creates a supply chain vulnerability for Asian project developers who depend on imported catalyst. The Chuangui project‘s reliance on Topsoe‘s HydroFlex technology illustrates this dependency: the catalyst will be produced outside China and shipped to Guangxi for loading .

Strategic Outlook
The UCO-to-SAF catalyst market is positioned for extraordinary growth from a micro-scale base, with the 63.2% CAGR reflecting the gap between current SAF production (0.8% of aviation fuel) and the mandates and net-zero commitments that require order-of-magnitude expansion. The 71% concentration among the top five suppliers describes a market with very high barriers to entry—catalyst formulation expertise, contaminant tolerance validation, and process licensing integration all favor incumbents—and this concentration is likely to persist through the forecast period.

For catalyst suppliers, the strategic imperative is project pipeline capture and co-processing capability. The dedicated UCO-to-SAF plants like Chuangui are high-visibility references, but their number is limited by capital availability and feedstock logistics. The larger volume opportunity may lie in co-processing retrofits at existing refineries, where the catalyst requirement is smaller per unit but the number of potential installations is far greater. Suppliers that demonstrate catalyst performance in both dedicated and co-processing configurations will capture the broadest demand.

For project developers and refiners, the practical consideration is catalyst selection as a lifecycle decision rather than a procurement transaction. The catalyst‘s activity determines the HDO conversion and yield; its selectivity determines the isomerization trade-off between freeze point and light-end loss; and its contaminant tolerance determines cycle length and regeneration frequency. These parameters interact with feedstock quality, which is the least controllable variable in the UCO supply chain. Engaging with catalyst suppliers on feed pretreatment requirements and guard bed design, rather than treating the catalyst as a commodity to be purchased at commissioning, is a risk mitigation strategy that affects project returns over the catalyst‘s multi-year life.

The longer-term trajectory depends on whether the SAF production shortfall that IATA documented in 2026 persists or reverses. If policy incentives strengthen and project FIDs accelerate, catalyst demand could grow faster than the baseline forecast. If the shortfall deepens and mandates are delayed or softened, the catalyst market‘s growth would be deferred. The 2026 project activity—Chuangui‘s construction, BPCL‘s commissioning timeline, and Honeywell‘s acquisition of Johnson Matthey‘s catalyst business—suggests that the industry‘s leading suppliers are investing on the assumption that the former scenario prevails .

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