Global Investment in Jatropha to Produce Biodiesel

Update on Jatropha Curcas: the world’s interest in using this plant to produce biodiesel!

1. United States: California: Allegro Biodiesel has commenced processing of jadtropha oil into biodiesel on a test basis.
2. England, De-Ord Fuel opened a new 100,000 GPY biodiesel facility in Mansfield that will use jatropha and waste vegetable oil as feedstocks.
3. China’s largest state oil company, Sinopec, said it will invest $5 billion in Jatropha and plantations in Indonesia. The Chinese and Italian governments have initiated a feasibility study for Jatropha biodiesel at Sichuan Universtiy. The project received $650,000 in support from Italy. The project is the third signed by Italy and China, promising cooperation in biofuels research since mid-April.
4. Integrated Biodiesel Industries said that it has acquired a 10 percent stake in Ireland’s South Cone Agriculture, a developer of Jatropha plantations. South Cone said that it would use the funds from the investment to develop plantations in Angola, Brazil and Argentina, and will initialize harvesting later this year in its first plantations. IBI, which will have a total production capacity of 135,000 tonnes by the end of 2008 from its plants in Argentina, said that it sought to develop alternative feedstocks to soy oil.
5. In Myanmar, “Biofuel by Decree: Unmasking Burma’s bio-energy fiasco,” was released by the Ethnic Community Development Forum detailing the use of forced labor and land confiscation to plant 8 million acres with jatropha to provide a solution to Myanmar’s fuel crisis. The first national Jatropha crops were ready for harvest this month, with up to 7 million acres planted by small farmers, after a national directive in 2006 that all farmers with more than 1 acre of land had to plant a minimum of 200 Jatropha seeds to establish a hedge around their landholdings.
6. In the United Arab Emirates, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi announced an $15 billion investment project in renewables, managed by Masdar. Masdar’s major initiative in bio-fuels is focused on Jatropha and other arid climate crops.
7. Archer Daniels Midland Company, Bayer Crop Science and Damiler to cooperate in Jatropha biodiesel project.
8. In Zambia, the Omnia group will invest $3 million in jatropha research, saying that the imperative to develop alternative fuels is stronger in landlocked Zambia than neighboring South Africa, and said that the company hopes to understand as much as possible about RH nutrients required by Jatropha so that it can develop and sell better fertilizers if cultivation of jatropha continues to increase in Southern Africa.
9. China Agro-Technology announced that it has secured $300 million in financing for biodiesel acquisitions and operations. The company is focused on building capacity to process jatropha oil to supply the growing demand for lower-cost biodiesel.

Labels: Jatropha-Investment