20 June 2008
Maputo — A preliminary study on biofuel production in Mozambique has suggested that the most appropriate crops to use would be sunflower, sugar cane and sweet sorghum, reports Friday's issue of the independent newsheet "Mediafax".
According to Edward Hoyt, a consultant for the company Ecoenergy, charged with drawing up the study, which will be used by the government in designing a definitive biofuels strategy for Mozambique, ethanol and biodiesel can be produced from these crops at low cost. Furthermore, they are already grown in the country, and many peasant farmers are already familiar with them.
This study was financed by the World Bank and the Italian government, in order to assess the viability of producing, using and exporting biofuels in Mozambique.
But the biofuels strategy has suffered a blow with the announcement by the Portuguese vegetable oil company Iberol that it is abandoning its soya and sunflower plantations in Mozambique.
Iberol had intended to produce biofuels from sunflower, but the chairperson of the Nutasa group, of which Iberol is part, Joao Rodrigues, told the Portuguese news agency LUSA that it had run into "many difficulties", notably the theft of the crop at harvest time, and the shortage of skilled labour.
Rodrigues blamed this on "social problems", notably food shortages among the population. "How can I make vegetable oil for fuel when the people living in front of the plantation don't have oil to make food?", he asked. "It didn't go well, and it's not worth wasting any more effort".
Iberal would only return to biofuels project in Mozambique, he added, if they were backed by development finance institutions, and also contained a social component. In other words, if donors financed the project, Iberol would be happy to manage it.
Nutasa entered Mozambique in 2002 when it purchased the Monapo Industrial Company (CIM), in the northern province of Nampula, from another Portuguese group, Entreposto. Despite the Iberal withdrawal, Nutasa remains involved in soap and oil production, and in livestock.
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