Singapore Airlines commits to sustainable aviation fuel from waste gases
The planned Beacon plant gains its first airline buyer as SIA moves from a 2025 memorandum to a binding order, with deliveries expected from 2028.
Singapore Airlines has committed to buy sustainable aviation fuel made from industrial waste gases and biomethane, giving Singapore’s planned Project Beacon its first airline customer and moving a potential-procurement relationship into a binding purchase agreement.
Under the agreement announced on 28 October, SIA will purchase up to 4,800 tonnes over three years from Aether Beacon, with deliveries expected to begin in 2028. Developer Aether Fuels is developing Beacon at Aster’s refining complex on Pulau Bukom.
The order gives a proposed fuel-production route an airline buyer. Its significance is also the raw material: waste-derived gases offer another way to make aviation fuel alongside the established process that relies on oils and fats.
From a memorandum to a purchase commitment
The SIA Group and Aether had signed a memorandum in February 2025 to potentially source sustainable aviation fuel from future Aether plants in the United States and Southeast Asia. That memorandum outlined intended procurement for five years, with an extension option.
The October agreement is a binding, project-specific purchase for the Singapore facility. Aether described it as a signal of committed airline demand that could help establish commercial conditions for the production pathway.
Broadening the feedstocks for aviation fuel
Beacon will use Aether’s Aurora technology to turn waste-carbon gases into liquid aviation fuel. The pathway offers a different feedstock option from hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids, the established process using oils and fats.
In the November 2025 Beacon announcement, the partners identified limited supplies of materials such as used cooking oil as a constraint on expanding sustainable aviation fuel production.
Energy and chemicals company Aster is to supply waste-carbon feedstock, renewable power, utilities and site support at Pulau Bukom. That combines a new fuel-production technology with an existing refining site and, now, an airline purchase commitment.
Beacon is the demonstration step in Aether’s expansion plans. The company says it intends to start a larger commercial plant by 2031 with at least ten times Beacon’s capacity.
