Two Years Later, Delta's Minnesota SAF Plant Opens

Delta Air Lines and Minnesota SAF Hub partners opened a new SAF blending facility at Flint Hills Resources' Pine Bend Refinery on July 27, 2026. The plant can blend up to 30 million gallons of neat SAF each year. That turns a September 2024 announcement into working infrastructure at Delta's second-largest hub.

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What Just Opened at Flint Hills' Pine Bend Refinery?

Flint Hills Resources and Delta completed a new SAF blending unit at the Pine Bend Refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota. The unit mixes neat SAF with conventional jet fuel before it moves to the airport.

Shell Aviation supplies the neat SAF for the operation. Flint Hills blends it using the refinery's existing rail unloading systems, large-volume storage tanks, and onsite laboratory.

The blended fuel then travels through Flint Hills' existing pipeline straight to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. No new pipeline construction was needed between the refinery and the terminal.

30 million gallons of neat SAF is the facility's annual blending capacity, according to Delta News Hub's July 27, 2026 announcement. Delta uses roughly 250 million gallons of jet fuel per year at MSP alone, so the new unit covers a meaningful share of that demand.

The 2024 Promise Versus What Opened in 2026

Delta and Flint Hills first described this project as an early-stage plan in September 2024. Two years later, the 30-million-gallon target held steady while the completion date slipped from late 2025 to July 2026.

RELATED: Minnesota's First SAF Blending Facility Announced

Category	September 2024 Announcement	July 2026 Completion
Project Status	Early-stage development	Facility complete and operating
Target Capacity	Up to 30 million gallons per year, neat SAF	Up to 30 million gallons per year, neat SAF
SAF Supplier	Shell, committed	Shell Aviation, confirmed and delivering
Target Timeline	Completion expected fourth quarter 2025	Opened July 27, 2026
Delivery Method	Planned via Flint Hills' existing pipeline	Delivered via Flint Hills' existing pipeline to MSP

The original 2024 release called Pine Bend the likely first blending site of its kind between the coasts. Delta and Flint Hills did not repeat that specific claim in the July 2026 completion announcement. It stands as an early ambition rather than a confirmed record.

How Did a Five-Company Coalition Get This Built?

Peter Frosch, President and CEO of Greater MSP Partnership, called the opening a turning point for the state's SAF economy.

Minnesota built this project through a coalition rather than a single company move. The Minnesota SAF Hub launched in August 2023 with Delta Air Lines, Greater MSP Partnership, Bank of America, Ecolab, and Xcel Energy as anchor partners.

That structure spreads cost and demand risk across finance, industry, and utility partners. Bank of America and Ecolab back the offtake side through a Demand Consortium formed with Deloitte and Delta to buy early SAF volumes.

The consortium's original plan called for purchasing the first several million gallons annually starting in the second half of 2025. Neither Delta nor Flint Hills has publicly confirmed whether those purchases are now underway.

Who Else Is Building Out This Supply Chain?

Shell Aviation sources the neat SAF for Pine Bend from multiple producers, including Montana Renewables and Diamond Green Diesel. Delta's broader supply deal with Shell now stretches well beyond Minnesota.

Delta signed a five-year agreement with Shell in July 2026 covering Los Angeles, Portland, JFK, Boston Logan, and MSP through 2030. Shell will deliver at least 15 million gallons of SAF to Delta in 2026, according to figures Aviation Week obtained from a Delta spokesperson.

That contract builds on Delta's own SAF purchasing history. Delta bought 23.4 million gallons of SAF across its network in 2025, up from 13 million gallons in 2024. That figure comes from the airline's own 2025 ESG report.

Roughly 90 percent of Delta's total carbon emissions come from jet fuel, per the airline's own disclosures. That is why the company has set a target of reaching 10 percent SAF usage across its network by 2030. That goal fits inside the industry's broader push toward scaling US SAF production nationally.

What Comes Next for Minnesota's SAF Buildout?

DG Fuels has proposed a $5 billion facility in Moorhead, Minnesota, designed to produce 193 million gallons of SAF annually. Greater MSP Partnership said that single proposed Moorhead facility would represent nearly half of all jet fuel used at MSP Airport. That figure covers every carrier at the airport, not Delta alone.

That Moorhead project sits alongside DG Fuels' Louisiana megaproject and a separate Nebraska facility, extending the company's SAF footprint across three states. Reaching that combined scale still depends on financing, permitting, and feedstock aggregation.

Minnesota's ambitions extend into related infrastructure too. The state sits inside the Heartland Hydrogen Hub footprint. It's one of five regional hydrogen hubs the Department of Energy confirmed it would keep funding earlier in 2026.

A carbon capture pipeline network planned across the same region could eventually support lower-carbon feedstock processing. Meanwhile, woody biomass pathways to SAF are drawing fresh government investment just across the border in Ontario. Montana Renewables recently signed its own large-scale SAF supply agreement, a sign of the same production buildout feeding facilities like Pine Bend.

Peter Carter, President of Delta Air Lines, framed the opening as a step rather than a finish line.

The Next Marker on Minnesota's SAF Timeline

Pine Bend shows that a multi-year, multi-company SAF commitment can move from paper to pipeline. The next test is whether Minnesota's other announced projects, including DG Fuels' Moorhead plant, follow the same path from plan to completion.

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