Biofuel projects attract some R3.2bn attention
The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and its partners want to invest up to R3.2-billion in biofuel projects, starting as early as 2009.
With construction starting in January next year, some of the five planned biofuel projects in the Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga will be able to produce up to 100-million litres of biofuel a year. The Eastern Cape plant will use sugar beet while the Mpumalanga plant will use sugar cane for its produce.
A third venture will produce 150-million litres a year from sweet sorghum and sugar cane in Pondoland, which spreads across the KwaZulu-Natal/Eastern Cape border, and a planned fourth project could produce 150-million litres of biofuel a year from maize in Ogies, Mpumalanga. Maize will be bought from local farmers, giving the agricultural market an enourmous boost. IDC and the Central Energy Fund wants to invest in a fith project, also in KwaZulu-Natal, where 100-million litres of biofuel will be produced from cassava in Makhathini.
With 8% biofuel (ethanol) and 92% petrol, the blend, if at least a billion litres a year are produced, could contribute 1.3% to gross domestic product and project leader Noel Kamrajh says this is sufficient to kick-start the biofuels industry.
There is one catch though, for biofuel projects to be viable, crude-oil prices must be between $50 and $75 a barrel. Anything below that, would need state incentives and nobody knows if that would realise.
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