John Hogg

Many governments worldwide have fuel tax legislation in place, imposing taxes and duties at various levels on different grades of fuel.

Fuel tax fraud is a multi-million pounds business. In the UK, the tax on road fuels such as petrol and diesel amounts to about 80% of the selling price which nets the Treasury over £20 billion per year. Some of this income is used for improvement and maintenance of the infrastructure. It is estimated that in excess of £500 million of excise duty is lost each year as a result of fuel laundering.

The gas oil that is used illegally in conventional diesel car engines is frequently a different fraction from road diesel and contains more sulphur and is far dirtier. Hence, running a road vehicle on gas oil affects both the Treasury and the environment and therefore in the UK it is dyed and marked to prevent its misuse and for easy identification.

The fuel marking system used is designed to support the legislation by deterring traffickers, detecting fuel adulteration and providing evidence of adulteration when it does occur that can be used to take legal action.

We offer a range of liquid fiscal marker packages designed to meet national fuel tax legislation offering protection against fuel fraud. For marking lower dutiable/rebated fuels the packages normally contain a dye to give a visual confirmation of misuse in higher duty fuels, and one or more markers, that are usually detected by a simple extraction procedure to give a clear, positive colour reaction, that indicates their presence in a fuel. When injected at the recommended level the marker package is formulated to give the correct level of all the legislated components.

For marking high grade fuels to detect adulteration, we can offer products from our Specialist Markers range to act as National legislative markers.

Our DYEGUARD® Markers can be used to check the product integrity at the refinery, on the roadside, or in the laboratory for high quantitative accuracy.

Our Markers:

> Are completely miscible with fuel and impart no colour
> Are resistant to simple removal techniques
> Allow simple roadside testing, often using aqueous based extractants
> Allow portable analysers to show the concentration of marked product in the fuel sample
> Have the ability to successfully prosecute perpetrators therefore discouraging fuel fraud

We also supply a range of portable spectrophotometers to measure the concentration of dyes and markers in fuel in the field.