Other News

In Brazil, Cargill, a global trader of sugar and ethanol, and Grupo USJ, a company dedicated to the sugarcane industry, have formed a 50/50 joint venture, SJC Bioenergia. The new JV brings together two of Grupo USJ's sugarcane mills, both located in the state of Goiás: its Quirinópolis-based São Francisco mill and the Cachoeira Dourada mill, which is currently under…
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Four months after closing, Ensus' bioethanol plant remains closed due to market conditions. Ensus closed its £250 million (€286 million) facility in May but insisted this was a temporary move. However, operations there remain halted and Ensus is unsure when production will be resumed. However it hopes to start refining by the end of this year. Nevertheless, the company remains positive…
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PTTMCC Biochem, a joint venture between PTT and Mitsubishi Chemical, is developing a polybutylene succinate (PBS) plant in Thailand. The joint venture has selected BioAmber, a renewable chemistry company, to build the plant and the company is scheduled the break ground on it in 2012. The plant will be built close to PTTMCC's PBS plant at the Map Ta Phut site in Rayong, and both these facilities…
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Corn production in China is expected to rise by 3% compared to 2009 levels, reaching 182.5 million tonnes this year – the highest ever recorded volume in the nation. Despite this record high, corn imports are likely to remain necessary and continue to grow steadily throughout the next few years. This can be attributed to an increasing domestic demand for corn in the animal feed and…
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Technical Trade, a company based in Romania, is developing a biofuel plant in the village of Remetea. The company will break ground on the €6.5 million ethanol plant early next year, with startup scheduled in 2013. It has not yet been disclosed how much ethanol the plant will produce, but it will be able to handle around 7,000 hectares of local crops such as potatoes, grain and white beet.
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Rentec Renewable Energy Technologies' proposed Olympiad Renewable Energy Centre (Olympiad Project), located in White River, Ontario, Canada, will be designed as a state-of-the-art energy facility that would employ the Rentech ClearFuels biomass gasification system and the Rentech process. The project is designed to produce 23 million gallons of bio-jet fuel, RenJet, and 13 million gallons of…
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Trading and services company Mitsui has signed an agreement with Simon Storage to store bioethanol at Simon’s Immingham West Terminal on the east coast of England. The bioethanol will be received and delivered by sea and road; and the product will also be offered to companies currently storing products in the terminal. Tank modifications were made for the new storage in order to prevent…
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In the US, ethanol producer Guardian Lima officially opened its new ethanol plant in Lima, Ohio on 15 September. Guardian Lima acquired a majority stake in the plant in 2010 after its former owner Greater Ohio Ethanol filed for bankruptcy. The ethanol facility has the capacity to produce 54 million gallons a year of ethanol, in addition to 165,000 tonnes of DDGs. Guardian Lima employs 33 fulltime…
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The construction of ethanol producer Poet's commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa, US, will remain on track after it received final approval for a $105 million (€78 million) loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy (DoE). The plant, Project Liberty, will be able to produce 25 million gallons a year of cellulosic ethanol from biomass when it comes online. 'This…
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In July this year, the US Department of Energy approved a proposal from the state of Kansas to install a number of flex-fuel ethanol pumps at 38 sites belonging to the convenience store chain QuikTrip. Under the proposal, the state and local company Ethanol Products were to form a partnership and invest $5 million (€3.6 million) and $10 million respectively in the installation of these…
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Waste-to-ethanol company Fulcrum BioEnergy has filed for an IPO that could raise enough money to fund the construction of an ethanol plant that has been under development since 2008. The IPO could raise up to $115 million (€85.6 million) and this, coupled with a possible US Department if Energy loan guarantee, would see Fulcrum break ground on its $120 million facility, Sierra…
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Oil major Lukoil says its oil terminal development in Barcelona is on schedule for completion, this week seeing the welding of the ring of the final tank within the farm. Litasco, the Lukoil International Trading and Supply company, formed a joint venture with Barcelona-based oil company Meroil in 2010 to build the development as an extension of the existing Meroil terminal in the Port of…
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In Florida, US, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, the Tampa Port Authority (TPA) and CSX Corporation have partnered to build an ethanol transportation system in the Port of Tampa. TPA will be responsible for the construction of a new railroad, on which trains of up to 100 cars will be able to deliver product. This new rail track will enable CSX to move ethanol from manufacturers based in the Midwest…
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