A fuel supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link. From feedstock refining to blending, delivery, and uplift, each step depends on the one before it. A gap anywhere limits what reaches the aircraft. Most industry attention this year has focused on scaling production. That attention is deserved but resilience in the supply chain is vital to ensure continuity of scaling production volumes. Infrastructure must scale alongside production, or the chain breaks where it lags.
Blending is often where that gap first appears. Under the legacy fuel supply chain, an airline signs an offtake agreement while the supplier decides where blending occurs, how fuel moves downstream, and how delivery to the airport is coordinated. This works well when producers and pathways are limited, but as the SAF market diversifies, it can become a constraint. Meeting future demand and mandates will require a wider, more dispersed mix of producers and feedstocks than existing supply chain models were designed to accommodate. If blending remains concentrated within a limited number of established logistics pathways, airlines may have fewer opportunities to access SAF volumes from a broader range of producers. The blend point should therefore be treated as a strategic interface between SAF production and fuel delivery, one that broadens market access, improves transparency of supply, and strengthens supply resilience.
Where demand is more dispersed than production, the same constraint appears: airports outside main hubs can be priced out because transporting blended SAF to every site is rarely economical at their volumes. This occurs because production is concentrated in a few hubs while demand spans a fragmented airport network, from major gateways to smaller regional sites. Under a centralised model, tier-two and remote airports may be excluded from SAF access by default.
Decentralised blending can give more airports practical access to SAF. On-airport deployment is one configuration of this. In September 2025, Toowoomba Wellcamp, a regional airport outside the main hubs, brought blending on-site using FlyORO’s AlphaLiteTM technology, becoming the first Australian airport with a co-located SAF blending facility.
Instead of importing pre-blended fuel from a distant hub, blending occurs at the point of uplift, drawing on existing Jet A-1 inventory while enabling SAF from diverse sources to be integrated and blended in line with evolving market demand, availability, and pricing dynamics. A strategically placed blend point can help address the access gap other diversifying regions will face as demand grows, and keep the supply chain more resilient during disruption.
Under current market conditions, second- and third-generation supply is fragmented across pathways, geographies, and producers, and often constrained by minimum-volume thresholds, aggregation requirements and additional handling before entering bulk infrastructure. Decentralised blending enables modular capacity to be deployed at the most efficient point in the supply chain, whether at a refinery, terminal, fuel farm or airport. This enables SAF volumes that might otherwise face logistical or economic barriers to enter the fuel distribution system more efficiently and eliminates avoidable costs. What matters is not the scale of the blend point but its position within the supply chain, thus making blending capacity a key network design consideration.
Overall, supply chain mechanics and blending access deserve the same scrutiny airlines give to production and offtake agreements. Mapping the network and identifying the most strategic blend point gives airlines real transparency, control, and optionality in the SAF supply chain.
Author: Jamie Ong & Genevieve Toh
*Find out more about FlyORO's engagement in the IATA's Strategic Partnerships Program on the partners directory.
