The meeting was brokered by sugar beet farmer and biofuels advocate Allan Navratil, who attended the session at Greencore's headquarters on May 22 of last year. With him was Kevin Lynch, an American ethanol specialist who is a Bioverda contractor, and another man, an accountant.

Navratil said that two Greencore executives were in attendance.

Navratil, who peppered the podium with criticism at last Thursday's Greencore AGM, said that Bioverda had expressed an interest in purchasing enough sugar beet produce to make 100 m litres of ethanol. Bioverda was never interested in buying the Mallow plant outright, but would be its sole customer if the plant were purchased by a third party consortium organised by Navratil and other farmers and investors.

Greencore finance director Patrick Coveney would not confirm or deny the meeting. A spokesperson for Bioverda, however, confirmed the date and the attendance of its ethanol specialist.

Following Greencore's announcement that it would exit sugar production in Ireland, several parties approached Bioverda about developing a biofuels facility at Greencore's Mallow site, the Bioverda spokesman said.

If anything, however, the May 22 meeting may have proved definitive for both companies in confirming their beliefs that ethanol production inMallow was uneconomic.

Navratil said that following the meeting he sent letters to Greencore CEO David Dilger and the minister for agriculture seeking another meeting. At this point, industry sources say, a senior Greencore executive angrily demanded and got a definitive declaration from Bioverda parent company NTR that the company was not interested in ethanol from Mallow.

"NTR and Bioverda have confirmed to Greencore that neither company has any aspiration to become involved in any context with sugar beet juice and ethanol in Ireland", Dilger wrote to Navratil on 20 June.

Later in the year Bioverda announced it would invest Euro50m in a 200,000 tonne biodiesel refinery in the Port of Cork but the company has since made a strategic decision not to invest in ethanol production in Europe.

Instead the company's plans to become a global biofuels leader will rest on developing ethanol production capacity in the United States while focusing on the production of biodiesel in Europe. The company has announced joint ventures with Virgin Fuels in the US and has invested in biodiesel facilities in Germany.