Apr 02, 2019
Another Corn-Based Ethanol Facility for Mato Grosso, Brazil
Author: Michael Cordonnier/Soybean & Corn Advisor, Inc.
Construction of another corn-based ethanol facility in Mato Grosso was announced last week by FS Bioenergia, which is a joint venture between the American Summit Agricultural Group and the Brazilian Tapajos Participacoes. This will be the company's third corn-based ethanol facility in the state of Mato Grosso.
The new facility will be located in the city of Nova Mutum in the mid-north region of Mato Grosso. The company opened Brazil's first corn-based ethanol facility in 2017 in the city Lucas do Rio Verde in Mato Grosso. The capacity of their first facility is currently being doubled. Their second facility is under construction in the city of Sorriso right up highway BR-163 from Nova Mutum. The company hopes to break ground on their third facility as soon as May.
FS Bioenergia will invest R$ 1 billion (approximately US$ 260 million) in the facility that will have the capacity to process 1.3 million tons of corn annually. The facility will produce 530 million liters of ethanol, 340,000 tons of dry distillers grain, and 17,000 tons of corn oil annually. The facility will be situated on 122 hectares of land (300 acres), located 11 kilometers from the center of the city along highway MT-235.
The company plans to incentivize the planting of 30,000 hectares of eucalyptus plantations, which will be the main source of energy for the facitity. The facility is scheduled to generate 130,000 MWV of energy which is sufficient to supply a city of 55,000 inhabitants.
This continues the trend in Mato Grosso for the production of ethanol from corn instead of sugarcane. The farmers in Mato Grosso continue to produce an excess of corn over and above the domestic needs within the state. The majority of the corn produced in Mato Grosso is exported out of distant Brazilian ports. The high cost of transporting the corn to the distant ports has convinced many companies that it is more profitable to process the corn into value added products such as ethanol.
Farmers in Mato Grosso are very pleased with the expanding corn-based ethanol industry in the state because they feel it will offer better opportunities to market their corn.