Access to sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) has so far been decided largely by geography. A handful of centralised blending plants, sited close to production and connected onward by pipeline or rail, put SAF within economic reach of the airports and airlines around them. That infrastructure is well-engineered and well-established. However, the issue now is not whether existing blending hubs work, but where new blending capacity should be added as SAF demand spreads beyond the reach of today’s network.
The constraint sits outside larger hubs, where regional airports and secondary fuel terminals outside the pipeline network have limited access to SAF due to the high geography premium to transport pre-blended volumes from a distant hub. That premium is often what decides whether SAF can be economically uplifted at those airports.
As such, decentralised blending addresses the wider market. Moving the blend point out to a terminal or an airport fuel farm means a market no longer needs a centralised hub within economic distance to access SAF. It needs a site that can blend safely. This is an extension of the existing network where modular systems like the AlphaLite can be integrated at both centralised and decentralised hubs, supporting blending at scale alongside established infrastructure.
Site Readiness for Blending Infrastructure Enables Market Access
Whether a market gets that access starts with what the site already has.
Blending needs three things: tanks, segregated blendstock access into those tanks, and storage capacity for the volumes involved.
What that looks like varies by the characteristics of the site.
A production site near a synthetic blend component (SBC) source or refinery typically has the most, with integrated storage and blendstock infrastructure already built for fuel handling at scale. A terminal, further along the distribution chain, usually has the storage but may need feedline or tie-in modifications to handle blending operations. An airport fuel farm near the point of uplift is generally the tightest of the three in both space and infrastructure, although it delivers the best end-to-end traceability of the molecules.
A site either meets the specification of a fixed blending plant, or it doesn’t, and most sites don’t.
Modular blending changes what the question is asking because capacity is added in units rather than built as a single fixed plant, with throughput matching demand.
Segregation is Non-Negotiable
Opening blending up to more sites only works if fuel safety is ensured at every one of them. That trust rests on one principle: positive segregation.
Jet A-1 and SBC are kept in independently fed lines until they’re combined in a controlled batch, so neither product can enter the wrong tank or feed at any point.
EI 1533 sets out the quality assurance requirements for SBC handling and semi-synthetic jet fuel manufacture, and EI/JIG 1530 governs the wider chain into airport storage. FlyORO engineers to those requirements across all AlphaLite sites, be it at terminals, refineries or airports. In practice, every deployment follows the same segregation principle, while the tie-in points, storage, and feed lines are adapted to each site’s layout. Furthermore, before any blending occurs, lines are also cleared to remove residual product and contaminants ahead of Jet A-1 or SBC entering them, preserving the integrity of the segregated system.
What Doesn’t Change, No Matter Where Blending Happens
This same logic carries through to certification, which is what ultimately allows a market to accept and uplift locally blended SAF. Once a site is ready and segregation is engineered into it, the blend point becomes the point of batch origination. Every batch is sampled and tested against the full ASTM D7566 Table 1 suite, and a new Certificate of Quality (CoQ) is issued for that batch on the results of the laboratory Certificate of Analysis (CoA). A batch certified and released to Table 1 is then regarded as ASTM D1655 material, with Def Stan 91-091 Annex B.2.1 requiring the same blend to satisfy Def Stan Table 1 as well, with the more stringent limit applying where the two differ. From that point, the batch is handled exactly like any other certified jet fuel, including under the Aviation Fuel Quality Requirements for Jointly Operated Systems (AFQRJOS) checklist used at jointly operated multi-supplier airports.
Overall, decentralised blending does not change the fundamentals of blending, but it changes the locations where these fundamentals are applied. Once a specific site is engineered for segregation and every batch clears certification, blending can occur anywhere that makes the most sense both logistically and economically.
The industry doesn’t need fewer centralised hubs. It needs the network to extend beyond those hubs to ensure adequate market access.
About FlyORO Technologies Pte. Ltd.
FlyORO Technologies Pte. Ltd. is a Singapore-based SAF blending technology company and a pioneer in SAF blending infrastructure. Its flagship AlphaLite platform is a modular, 40-foot blending unit powered by FlyORO’s proprietary, patented technology and designed to integrate with existing fuel infrastructure, enabling SAF delivery wherever it is needed across the supply chain – upstream at production sites, midstream at fuel terminals, or downstream at airport fuel farms. This versatility allows airport fuel operators to serve customers more effectively through a simplified supply chain, while giving airlines and fuel buyers the flexibility to align SAF uptake with their sustainability commitments.
In 2025, FlyORO deployed an AlphaLite unit with Wagner Sustainable Fuels and Boeing at Toowoomba Wellcamp Airport in Queensland, Australia – the first SAF blending terminal co-located at an airport globally, a milestone that advanced AlphaLite to Technology Readiness Level 9 (TRL 9). As of 2025, FlyORO has blended more than 500,000 litres of SAF across its AlphaLite deployments.
For all commercial, marketing and investment enquiries, please contact us at hello@flyoro.co