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Zimbabwe: Govt Set to Revive Ethanol Production
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Financial Gazette (Harare)
28 February 2008
Posted to the web 29 February 2008
Harare
THE government is set to revive the production of ethanol, with a projected annual output of 25 million litres, in a desperate bid to mitigate a fuel crisis that has ravaged the country's frail economy, The Financial Gazette can report.
The revival of the production of ethanol from sugar-based feedstocks, which is among man's earliest ventures into value-added processing, is part of the government's pursuit for alternative sources in the face of crippling fuel shortages.
Energy and Power Development Minister Mike Nyambuya said last week that an ethanol plant, which will be commissioned at the end of the year, would produce twenty-five million litres of ethanol to be used for blending petrol and ease the country's fuel crisis.
"We will invest into bio-fuels through re-introduction of blending of petrol with ethanol...In addition, the ethanol blending project commissioning is earmarked for sometime at the end of this year and is expected to produce 25 million liters of ethanol annually," said Nyambuya.
Sugar cane, the raw material for the production of ethanol, is produced at Triangle, a sugar estate in the country's Lowveld area owned by Triangle Limited, a South African-owned company.
Zimbabwe suspended production of ethanol fuel at the height of the 1991/92 droughts, which led to a drastic cut in the production of sugar cane in the country.
At its peak, Triangle produced an average of 40 million litres of ethanol. Production of ethanol had in recent years been limited to small quantities for industrial use.
Extraction of ethanol from sugarcane is widespread in Brazil, the world's top sugar producer. It pioneered ethanol fuel production from sugar cane thirty years ago.
Brazil now boasts one of the leading ethanol production industries in the world, with a majority of its service stations having two sets of pumps, one for ethanol fuel and the other for petrol or diesel.
Critics warn that this form of alternative source of energy might be wrecked by the shortage of feedstock since sugar cane production has plunged over the years, creating shortages of sugar on the market.
Zimbabwe is grappling with a nine-year fuel crisis, which has affected key sectors of the economy such as manufacturing, tourism and mining.
The crisis has prompted the government to look for alternative ways of producing fuel, with the recently commissioned a bio-diesel plant likely to start operating in the next four years should the key inputs like jatropha seeds become available.
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The government hopes it could save US$80 million annually on fuel imports once this plant becomes operational.
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