Brazil will need an additional 100 ethanol plants by 2020

Criado em 28/06/13 11h51 e atualizado em 28/06/13 11h57
Por Camila Maciel Fonte:Agencia Brasil

São Paulo – Over the next eight years, the demand for ethanol, gasoline and natural gas will rise 50%, according to the Sugarcane Industry Union (“União da Indústria de Cana-de-Açúcar – Unica”) and an additional 100 sugarcane mills/ethanol plants will be needed to meet that demand.

The president of Unica, Elisabeth Farina, speaking at the opening of the 2013 Ethanol Summit, declared that the sector can handle the surge in demand. “We have to double production and that means make investments. We have to repeat the growth we had in the period 2006-2009,” she said.

Farina called the Brazilian flex motor vehicle [that runs on gasoline (mixed with 25% ethanol) or ethanol and any combination of the two fuels] the greatest asset the sugarcane/ethanol industry (“indústria sucroalcooleira”) has. Flex motor vehicles have now been on Brazilian roads for a decade, she pointed out, and they have become enormously important, functioning as market regulators in a market where there are still some 20 million vehicles that are not using flex motors.

As demand goes up, financing for ethanol production is expected to rise. The vice president of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES”), Wagner Bittencourt, says that this year the bank should be making loans to the ethanol sector at normal, but rising levels. That means BNDES loans to the sector this year should be around $3 billion, almost $1 billion more than last year.

“Between 2008 and 2012, the BNDES loaned $15 billion to the sugarcane/ethanol sector. As a result there was modernization and expansion. Up until the month of April this year, BNDES outlays to the sector were around $1.6 billion,” said Bittencourt.

Translator: Allen Bennett