Roxas Holdings Inc (RHI) announced that their subsidiary, Roxol Bioenergy Corp will setup a Ethanol Distillery next to Central Azucarera de La Carlota Inc. their sugar mill in La Carlota City in the province of Negros Occidental. This is a joint venture with India firm, KBK Chem-Engineering Pvt. Ltd.
The plant will have a capacity of of 100,000 liters a day (30 M liters/year) and will be finished by Q4 of 2009 or Q1 of 2010. Feedstock will be molasses from their 3 sugar mills: Central Azucarera de La Carlota Inc., Central Azucarera Don Pedro, Inc. in Batangas and an affiliate company, Hawaiian-Philippine Company in Negros Occidental.
KBK Chem-Engineering has already experience in providing bioethanol and cogeneration facilities in India, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Africa, East Europe and Latin America.
Facilities to be constructed include: fermentation and distillation in ethanol production, waste water treatment, slops concentration, storage, steam boiler and turbo-generator components.
Just late this week Mr. Gambao wrote that compared to other commodities that have risen due to the food crisis, sugar and coconut prices remained stable. Given the projected time frame of the start of operation of this distillery (late 2009 / early 2010), I’d bet that the price of sugar would go up once this distillery starts pumping out ethanol. Most especially so because rival San Carlos Bioenergy distillery is also located in Negros Occidental’s San Carlos City. According to the Bureau of Agri Statistics, Negros region in the Philippines is the highest producer of sugarcane in the country, next to that is the province of Bukidnon.
Roxas Holdings Inc is a publicly traded company in the Philippines.
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