A joint venture has been established between Omaha-based firm ConAgra Foods and New York environmental technology company CWT to open a processing plant that will turn edible turkey parts into oil.

The venture, called Renewable Environmental Solutions, will establish the first commercial-scale Thermal Depolymerization Process (TDP) plant.

The $20 million (€17.5 million ) turkey-to-oil plant is being constructed beside ConAgra's turkey-slaughtering plant in Montana. The facility is due to open in June 2003.

TDP, which has been patented by CWT, converts low-value, organic materials into oils, gases and carbon using water, pressure and temperature.

The process moves raw materials through four chambers, mixing turkey bones and guts with water.

Matter is broken it down through heat and pressure, and comes out the other side as 35 per cent oil, 10 per cent natural gas, 5 per cent solids and 50 per cent water.

When the 10,000 square feet facility is completed it will be capable of converting 200 tons of fats, bones, feathers and grease every day from ConAgra's Butterball turkey plant.

A grant of €4.4 million from has been received from the US Environmental Protection Agency to complete the project.

Both ConAgra Foods and CWT believe that there is enormous potential for the TDP plant.

In the US alone, meat processors produce more than three million tons of tallow and grease, two million tons of bone and 300,000 tons of feathers.