Green Fuel to build more ethanol plants

In a recent interview, Green Fuel group general manager Mr Graeme Smith said: “Despite the challenges that we are facing presently, we have an ambitious project to finish over the next five years.
“We are looking forward to building two ethanol plants here (Chisumbanje) and another one which will be based in Middle Sabi.”
The company recently suspended operations at its Chisumbanje ethanol plant citing shortage of storage facilities as it is sitting on 10 million litres of the commodity.
The $600 million Chisumbanje ethanol plant was commissioned last year.
Mr Smith said so far $150 million had been invested towards developments aimed at promoting ethanol production.
“In the long term, as a result of the new plants 1,4 billion litres of ethanol will be produced per year,” he said.
The existing plant before operations were suspended was producing 160 million litres of ethanol annually against an  installed capacity of 500 million litres per year.
Mr Smith said the offtake of ethanol production was low as a result of limited land under sugar cane production at their estates.
He said Green Fuel intended to completely substitute petrol products in the long term as the world was moving towards the promotion of the use of bio-energy.
The use of ethanol will go a long way in helping the country to reduce the fuel import bill.
Ethanol production in Chisumbanje is a joint venture project between the Agricultural Rural Development Authority (Arda) and Green Fuel’s parent company, MacDom, which has so far seen 4 500      people being employed at the plant and Chisumbanje and Middle Sabi sugar estates.
Mr Smith said in the long term they were looking forward to employing 15 000 people as a result of the ethanol project.
MacDom entered into a contract for the joint venture project in 2007, which saw the resuscitation of Chisumbanje Sugar Estates which at the moment has 4 000 of the               40 000ha being put under sugar cane while Middle Sabi Estates has 10 000ha with 3 500  having so far been put under sugar cane.