According plan, PetroVietnam Central Biofuels JSC (PCB) will produce ethanol and export to Philippines in 2012.
However, the operation of company is a year slower than plan as outlined. As explained by a representative from board, PCB company has to wait the government approve to permit bio-ethanol production, so if company goes into operate before approval, it is afraid that product will not be permited to sell in the market.
Currently, a litre of E5 is VND100 lower than A92, but not much demand. Customers are beginning to know the biofuel product while company produces more than 8.33 million litre a month, so we will meet the difficulty for demand in domestic market, added representative.
Not only PCB, but also a Orient Bio-fuels Company of petroVietnam meet the same difficulty.
Mr. Pham Anh Tuan, a general director of Orient Bio-fuels Company (Binh Phuoc) said that, company will complete the installation in April and will go into operation in May. With low demand currently, we do not know our sales in the next time.
Mr. Nguyen Phu Cuong, Deputy Director of Science and Technology department, tasks for biofuel of Ministry of Commerce told that a lot of agricultural products such as sliced cassava are exporting to foreign countries as raw with low prices. So some experts called the ariculture sector should invest more technologies for intensive processing in order to achive higher selling prices.
"Now Vietnam can produce ethanol from raw sliced cassava, it means that we have invested more technologies for intensive processing, so ethanol companies are intending to export their product for higher value instead of cheap price of sliced cassava , "he said.
In the biofuel development project by 2015, vision to 2025, the Government has allocated to Petrovietnam to build three ethanol plants in Binh Phuoc, Phu Tho and Quang Ngai with total capacity of 300 million liters a year.
As the plan within 2012, those plants will supply 240 million liters of ethanol per year in order to meet the demand for biofuel E5 production in the country.
Biofuel (E5) includes 5% of ethanol and 95% of unleaded A92 gasoline. E5 is used for internal combustion engines such as motorcycles and cars.
Source: Xangdau.net
