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01.29.08
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BNDES approves a R$ 1.97-million financing for innovation in sugar & alcohol sector
The Board of Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social [BNDES] approved a R$ 1.97-million financing to Vale do Ivaí S/A Açúcar e Álcool. The resources will be directed to the construction of the Technology Reference Center for the sugar and alcohol sector, in the Municipality of São Pedro do Ivaí (PR), under the Bank's Innovation-Production financing line.
The line, created in 2005, enables a financing of up to 100% of the investment amount, which is fully carried out according to the TJLP, the Long-Term Interest Ratex used as a reference in most of the financings granted by BNDES, which is currently 6.25% per year. In the last two years, the Bank has disbursed R$ 117 million for innovation projects. In this case, the Bank's share will be 79% of the project's total investment, budgeted at R$ 2.48 million.
BNDES's support will help increase the competitiveness of an important part of the Brazilian industry, enabling plants that are Reference Center clients to achieve higher quality alcohol and expand yeast output. The investments will also enable the finding of new economic applications for yeasts.
With these resources, the company will develop models and processes of alcohol fermentation and distillation, with a view to higher performance in the production of alcohol and yeast mass. As the microorganism chosen for study is a yeast that produces bioethanol from saccharose, the main beneficiaries of research results will be the alcohol plants.
Yeast, which is left over from sugarcane juice fermentation during alcohol production, is one of several products that can be obtained from sugarcane. Each liter of alcohol produced leaves a 30-gram residue of yeast on a dry basis. In Brazil, it is estimated that only 10% of the yeast production potential are used in the manufacturing of products for human and animal consumption. The largest part of the productive potential is either wasted by plants and distilleries that are unaware of the yeast distillation process during fermentation, or sold in the gross for animal feed, without having undergone any type of industrial processing.
The project will allow technological leaps towards obtaining higher-quality yeast, improving sugarcane juice fermentation and alcohol distillation, and offering new processes for the sugar and alcohol sector and breweries. Furthermore, it will reduce consumption of electrical and thermal energy and of liquid effluents.
Regional impact of the project - The center will promote technologies that may help enhance the competitiveness of the region's sugar and alcohol plants and breweries. Once they are manufactured in an industrial scale, the new products from the Reference Center will lead to an increased demand for manpower, with a multiplying effect in generating revenues for the region.
Vale do Ivaí, established in 1981, operates in the sugar and alcohol sector and has an installed milling capacity of 1.5 million tons of sugar cane/crop. The production forecast for the 2007/2008 crop is 57 million liters of alcohol, 127 thousand tons of sugar and 25 thousand tons of yeast cream.
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