The company listed on the ASX in early 2006 (ABJ) and despite interest in the first six months seeing its share price rise from 55 cents to reach a high around 90 cents, its value has been in steep decline ever since. Its shares are currently trading around 1.7 cents, meaning a $10,000 investment made at the June 06 peak would currently be worth $188.

"The Australian Government made changes since the middle of 2006 that limited the blend of biodiesel that you can effectively market to fleet users, just by the way the tax system is structured on biodiesel and biodiesel blends," Dooley told www.environmentalmanagementnews.net.

There are still other serious threats to the business too, he told investors, especially the blend standards being considered by the federal government.

The Commonwealth is expected to impose a 5% cap on biodiesel blends at retail bowsers, although Dooley says there is "a real risk" the cap on fleet use will also be set at 5%, rather than the 20% the industry had been expecting.

Biodiesel feedstocks competion with food uses, an issue that has made media headlines in recent months, is another risk both to costs and to reputation.

These factors mean, "the biodiesel business in Australia represents an unacceptable risk to shareholders," Dooley said before outlining plans to diversify the company "into other areas of renewable energy," which will be focused on other biofuel types.

"What we're intending to do is look at some of the new technologies coming out of the US and Europe, where they use cellulose, which is a hell of a lot cheaper and more abundant than [current biodiesel feedstocks] fats and oils."

Preliminary investigations of alternative technologies are underway, but according to Dooley the short-term goal is "to reverse the cash bleed and start making the company cash positive in the third quarter". No serious investigations would begin until this goal was achieved, he said.