Sake brewer Oenon turns hand to biofuel
Japanese sake and liquor maker Oenon Holdings will start making ethanol at the nation’s largest biofuel plant this year using rice imported by the government.
The Tokyo-based company plans to use 12,000 metric tonnes of foreign rice from government stockpiles in order to produce 5,000 kilolitres (kl) by December. Oenon are to double output next year and plan to reach the plant’s annual capacity of 15,000kl by 2011.
Japan aims to raise biofuel output almost fivefold in the next four years to 50,000 kl in order to help meet a Kyoto Protocol treaty commitment to cut greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming.
The nation, the worlds biggest net food importer, lags behind a global shift to cleaner-burning biofuels because of scarce local farm supplies.
‘We will start ethanol production with imported rice,’ communications department manager Masumi Ushigome said yesterday. In the future, Oenon plans to make biofuel from higher-yielding rice grown in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, where the company’s ethanol plant is located, he added.
The ethanol plant was built under a government project to test the commercial viability of technology to produce the fuel from local crops including rice, wheat, sugar cane and beet. The government subsidized about half of the €37. million in capital spending on the plant, Ushigome said.
The Tokyo-based company plans to use 12,000 metric tonnes of foreign rice from government stockpiles in order to produce 5,000 kilolitres (kl) by December. Oenon are to double output next year and plan to reach the plant’s annual capacity of 15,000kl by 2011.
Japan aims to raise biofuel output almost fivefold in the next four years to 50,000 kl in order to help meet a Kyoto Protocol treaty commitment to cut greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming.
The nation, the worlds biggest net food importer, lags behind a global shift to cleaner-burning biofuels because of scarce local farm supplies.
‘We will start ethanol production with imported rice,’ communications department manager Masumi Ushigome said yesterday. In the future, Oenon plans to make biofuel from higher-yielding rice grown in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, where the company’s ethanol plant is located, he added.
The ethanol plant was built under a government project to test the commercial viability of technology to produce the fuel from local crops including rice, wheat, sugar cane and beet. The government subsidized about half of the €37. million in capital spending on the plant, Ushigome said.
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