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Bacolod City ? An ethanol plant, projected to cost between P3 billion to P5 billion, will be built soon in Negros Occidental under a joint venture agreement between Biofuels International Phils. Inc. (BIPI) and a group of foreign investors.
BIPI president Roberto Montelibano said the plant, which would be located in barangay Blumentritt, Murcia town, would be bigger than the recently inaugurated San Carlos Bionergy Inc. plant in San Carlos City.
It would be built within a 45-hectare property being developed into an industrial zone, according to Montelibano, also the president of the Metro Bacolod Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MBCCI).
The BIPI, composed of a group of sugar farmers, businessmen and professionals, was in the final stages of concluding the agreement with foreign investors, he said.
Montelibano placed the capacity of the new ethanol plant at 200,000 liters of ethanol per day while its co-generation plant could produce 19 megawatts (mw), he added.
The San Carlos plant produces 125,000 liters of ethanol per day and eight megawatts of electricity.
The Murcia plant's annual production was projected at 45 million liters of alcohol and 95,000 mw of exportable electricity, Montelibano said.
Starting the crop year 2011-2012, the plant's initial capacity would meet about seven percent of the total alcohol requirement for the 10 percent alcohol blending with gasoline as mandated in the Biofuels Law, he said.
The electricity from the power plant would be supplied to the electric cooperatives in Negros to enable these cooperatives to meet the projected consumption growth of the province, Montelibano added.
The Murcia plant to be built on a property owned by the Montelibano family was designed to process sugarcane and sweet sorghum simultaneously and to use agricultural wastes as fuel, Montelibano explained.
He said they also invited other landowners in the area to make their property part of the economic zone.
He explained that the major partners of this project were the thousands of small farmers and ARBs as ?contact growers? of sugarcane and sweet sorghum.
