SAO PAULO, March 22 (Reuters) – Braskem (BRKM5.SA), Latin America’s largest petrochemicals company, may open a second factory to produce polyethylene from sugar cane-based ethanol, once a first plant starts up around October, a project manager at the firm said on Monday.

Braskem expects to become the first commercial-scale producer of polyethylene made from a renewable source when a plant in Brazil begins producing the building block resin used in plastics at the Triunfo plant, said Leonora Novaes, Braskem’s commercial head for green polyethylene. Leer más »

There has been quite a bit of activity in Brazil during the last few months of 2009 and it looks like it will continue. Bunge Limited announced today that it will become the 100 percent owner of Usina Moema Participacoes S.A.

Moema Par is a holding company that owns one sugarcane mill and has ownership in five others. Together the six mills, known as the Moema Group, have the capacity to crush 15.4 metric tons. This agreement, which is structured as a share exchange worth approximately $896 million, gives Bunge 60 percent effective share of the total capacity. Leer más »

New sugarcane and other cultivations varieties adapted to the region of USA by the Cost of the Gulf of Mexico are being developed for use in the ethanol production as an alternative that burns cleaner than the gasoline.Â

Scientific of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), in collaboration with the Louisiana Agricultural Experimental Station (LAES) and the American Sugarcane League USA (ASCL), have already launched three new varieties of “energy sugarcane”. This name is derived of the high levels of sugar and fiber, which possibly could serve as complementary raw materials of the ethanol. Leer más »

Rocchia Ferro says that the energy and the biofuels are the future of the sugar sector. Alperovich´s enthusiasm.

IMMEDIATE OBJECTIVE. The shares of the industrial sugar bowls aim to reach a price of $70 per 50 kilos bag.Â

In the tucumano sugar sector two realities cohabit. On one hand, the industrials complains because the price of the sugar doesn’t allow them to obtain profitability, in spite of the measures that were adopted so that through banks the financing of what was left of the harvest 2008 was done, in order to level the offer and demand of the product in the internal market. On the other hand, relating of the industry get ready with strong investments to participate in the business of the electric power cogeneration and of the biofuels production. Leer más »

Interview with Carlos Pedro Blaquier, president of Ledesma

Affirms that the exchange rate is low and that it subtracts competitiveness to the industry; he believes it necessary to rethink the retentions.Â

In the Argentina of the economic shocks, to turn 100 years is not little thing. Ledesma industry, the company that Carlos Pedro Blaquier directs, is one of the few cases that arrived to the three figures without being never sold to a foreign group. Ledesma has become a company that passed over the limits of industry and has become a true economic group. Blaquier that directs the company since 1970, accepted an interview with LA NACION to summarize the history of the centennial company. Leer más »

Barra Bonita, Brazil (Reuters) – The ethanol biofuel industry of Brazil would invest near 33.000 million dollars up to 2015, said on Tuesday the Association of the Cane Industry (Unica) of that country, while the fuel demand grows as an alternative to the gasoline.Â

The production of ethanol derived from the sugarcane has grown in constant way in the last years and it is forseen that it will increase almost a 20 percent only in the lapse 2008/09, because the flexible fuel cars that work only with ethanol, now dominate the sales of new cars in this quick growing nation. Leer más »

Franco Fogliata evaluated the cost of the productions starting from cane and corn.Â

SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION. Tucumán and the NOA face a great challenge. FILE OF LA GACETA Â

In the biofuels topic there is a lot to do and to say. In its projection toward 2010, when the Law Nº 26.093 enters in validity according to the protocol rules signed by Argentina in Kyoto – commitment of 180 countries to reduce the emanations of toxic gases up to 2012 -, it still needs to define how Tucumán and the NOA should face this new challenge. Leer más »

The president from Brazil in a message to the United Nations Economic and Social Council in an extraordinary meeting in New York to treat on the alimentary crisis, today attacked again against the oil companies for wanting to “demonize” the biofuels. Leer más »