São Paulo – Kenana Sugar Company (KSC), the owner of the first Sudanese ethanol mill, shipped its first load of the fuel last week. Exports totalled 5 million litres and they went to the European Union, at a price of 450 euros per cubic metre. The information was disclosed by the embassy of Sudan to Brazilian capital Brasília.
According to the marketing director at KSC, Hassan Hashim Erwa, the company plans to export over 5 million litres a month to Europe and Africa. Apart from that, Sudan is trying to implement the use of ethanol as a fuel for its vehicles, as is done in Brazil.
Up to 2013, the company from Sudan wants to increase its production capacity to 200 million litres of ethanol a year. Between 2009 and 2010, production of sugar in the mill should reach 750,000 tonnes. The project is an effort of the Sudanese company, the Ministry of Energy and GIAD, a heavy industry.
The plant was inaugurated in June within the Kenana complex, located 250 kilometres south of country capital Khartoum, on the banks of the White Nile. The factory was built by the Brazilian Dedini, which supplied all the machinery and equipment. The mill’s current production capacity is 65 million litres.
Sudan is the largest producer of sugarcane in Africa, harvesting 1.2 million tonnes per crop, and there is still much area available for exploration. The Kenana project, which is state-owned, started being developed in 1980 and the sugar produced is exported to Arab and African countries.
Kenana has already received investment of over US$ 800 million. Apart from the government of Sudan, the company has as its partners the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Japan.
*Translated by Mark Ament
