Japan Explores Building Bio-ethanol Factory
Friday, 19 January, 2007 | 15:54 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The Kanematsu Corporation, a company from Japan, plans to build a bio-ethanol factory in Indonesia. It is estimated that the factory with 100,000 liters per day capacity will be an investment of around US$25 million.

Industry Minister Fahmi Idris said Kanematsu is interested in developing bio-energy based on cassava in Indonesia. “They’re interested and will explore some areas,” he said yesterday (18/1).

He said a meeting between Kanematsu and some areas considered the potential to develop the bio-ethanol base commodity has been accomplished. There are eight regions that attended the meeting. Most are from Sumatra, such as Riau and North Sumatra.

Kanematsu is a major food company from Japan , and is involved in information technology, iron and steel industry and energy. The head office is in Tokyo, Japan. In Indonesia, the company has a subsidiary PT Kanematsu Trading Indonesia. Kanematsu also has a bio-ethanol factory in Thailand with a capacity of up to 200,000 liters per day and an investment of US$50 million.

Fahmi went on to say, in addition to building a bio-ethanol factory, Kanematsu is interested to build a bio-diesel factory and electric generator with around 3 megawatt capacity with a base commodity of oil palm in Riau. “All are still in a feasibility test,” he said.

Riau Governor Rusli Zainal said Riau is one of the potential areas for building bio-diesel factories with oil palm as the base commodity. Out of 5.4 million hectares of oil palm plantations in Indonesia, around 1.5 million hectares or 30 percent are located in Riau.

According to him, from oil palm plantations in Riau, two million tons of oil palm l can be collected in a year. “It can also be the base commodity source for electricity generation,” he said.

MUHAMAD FASABENI