Bad weather delays commissioning of $120-M bioethanol plant

MANILA, Philippines - Green Future Innovations Inc. (GFII), a consortium of Japanese, Filipino and Taiwanese firms, has delayed the commissioning of its bioethanol and cogeneration project in Isabela due to unfavorable weather conditions.

Operations of the $120-million plant will be pushed back to June from an earlier target of first quarter this year, a company official said.

“Not yet, maybe from June,” Kenichi Hisatomi, general manager of the Manila office of Itochu Corp., said when asked on the timeline for the plant commissioning.

GFII encountered delays on the construction of the plant as several typhoons battered Luzon late last year.

But so far, the installation of mechanical equipment in the bioethanol plant is already 99 percent complete. JGC Philippines Inc., the local unit of Japan Gas Corp., is the project contractor.

GFII is a joint venture among Japan’s Itochu, Japan Gas, Philippine Bioethanol and Energy Investments Corp. and Taiwanese holding company GCO.

The bioethanol and cogeneration plant will be capable of producing 54 million liters of bioethanol. It will convert bagasse or sugarcane residues to around 19 megawatts (MW) of renewable power, 13 MW of which will be exported to the national grid.

GFII earlier wanted to start commissioning the bioethanol plant in the first quarter. It is located at the Isabela Ecofuel Agro-Industrial Ecozone in the town of San Mariano in Isabela.

GFII holds a growing contract with 4,000 sugarcane farmers in adjacent communities in the province.

The company has so far developed 11,000 hectares of agricultural lands in at least eight adjoining towns for its sugarcane supply requirement.

More than 15,000 Filipinos will be employed for the project.

The Biofuels Act of 2006, which was passed into law in 2007, mandates that at least five percent of the total gasoline sold in the country be blended with five percent bioethanol by February 2009 and upon the recommendation of the National Biofuels Board and the Department of Energy, increases this mandated blend to 10 percent by 2011.