The Tongaat-Hulett group, best known for sugar production in Southern Africa, believes it can produce 200 million litres of biofuel a year. It's already producing 25 million litres in Zimbabwe and some in Mozambique, and is considering South Africa and Swaziland.
South Africa currently consumes 11 billion litres of petrol and 8 billion litres of diesel a year. The Southern Africa biofuels Association (Saba) believes that the local biofuels industry has the potential to supply 10% of South Africa's petrol and diesel by 2010. In comparison, US ethanol output in 2005 was 3.5 billion gallons.
A new South African government biofuels strategy is expected to mandate a biofuels blending regime. Ethanol Africa launched South Africa's first large-scale bioethanol production plant in July this year. The company is expanding production, and is managing an emerging-farmer programme that focuses on small-scale farmers. Company CEO Johan Hoffman believes that planting maize for bioethanol is not a threat to food security. This year only 1.5 million hectares of maize was planted in South Africa, which is a third of the 4.5 hectares suitable for maize cultivation.
As ethanol is used as a replacement for imported MMT and ferrocene, fuel additives, a 10% ethanol blend can save South Africa R2 billion a year in foreign exchange. Since the emissions are also lower, bioethanol can assist South Africa to sell carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol. The country is the third-worst offender in the world concerning the per-capita production of greenhouse gas emissions.
[reported in Engineering News, August 11-17 2006]
