The Hungarian unit of Swedish biofuels firm SEKAB will build four bioethanol plants in a total investment of up to 380 million euros (US$487 million), the company said on Wednesday. The plants will produce 600 million litres of bioethanol a year from the autumn of 2008, much of it for export, and using 1.5 million tonnes of grain, mostly maize but also some wheat, it said."The whole project will cost up to 380 million euros," SEKABs Stig-Gunnar Eriksson told a press conference.

The plants will also churn out 460,000 tonnes of animal feed raw materials and some liquid carbon dioxide as by-products. "Growing the raw materials -- maize and wheat -- is expected to provide a livelihood for 10,000 farmers and employees in industries connected to agriculture," the company said.

The plants themselves will employ 300 people, and the firm will sign contracts with grain suppliers for 10 years. Biomass power plants burning 612,000 tonnes of straw and grass will cover the entire energy requirement of the factories and will even produce surplus electricity.

Hungary has millions of tonnes of surplus grain, mostly maize, in its stores after two record crops, which the government wants to use to produce more biofuels. "The total raw material need of bioethanol plants which can be set up in Hungary may be 4 million tonnes of grain by 2010, mostly maize but also wheat to a smaller extent," SEKAB said.

The landlocked eastern European country also wants to reduce its dependence on energy imports, much of it from Russia. "We would like to transform the entire energy system and the excessive dependence in the field of fossil fuels," agriculture ministry official Jozsef Solymosi said. "In agriculture there is tremendous energy which should be transformed," he added.
(Por Andras Gergely, Planet Ark, 06/07/2006)