Partner Search Request: India Green Fuel Fund / IGFF, The Netherlands and India

AutoMobiliteit Foundation io, The Netherlands, is looking for partners for activities related to production of ethanol as a biofuel.

• More than 70% of all the ethanol produced in the world is made out of sugarcane as feedstock.
• Sugarcane is the cheapest and most effective feedstock to produce ethanol.
• After Brazil, India is by far the world's largest producer of sugarcane. However, the country produces only a fraction of the ethanol that the large scale availability of sugarcane would warrant.
• The low levels of ethanol activity in India reflect largely the fact that the commercialization of sugarcane, sugar, and ethanol is still subject to a fairly cumbersome and inward oriented regulatory environment. And the long-standing existence of such limiting regulation has also translated into both a highly fragmented industry structure and very low levels of productivity/efficiency.
• IGF believes that it is ultimately on India's best interest to let its biofuel markets "gravitate". IGF expects that India will liberalize and modernize a number of important regulations that have "trapped" the intrinsic higher value of biofuel assets in the country.
• Building a Greenfield plant requires about US$ 20-25 Mio. of investment. There are very few sugar-mill owners in India with the financial strength to undertake such level of investmens.

Challenge

IGF-I is of the opinion that the situation briefly illustrated above provide ample space as well as great investment opportunities for players able to combine:

1. industrial know how to build/operate ethanol plants (and related business) in India;
2. industrial know how to commercialize fuels in the country and abroad;
3. financial strength and flexibility to execute a string of deals over a relatively short period of time:
4. the courage to take an early mover stance into the coming consolidation and modernization of the industry.

The automobile industry is endorsing ethanol as one of the most attractive biofuel. Companies like GM, Ford, Saab, Volvo, Porche, and even Ferrari are already producing E-85 cars, namely cars able to run on engines using up to 85% of ethanol and only 15% of conventional fuel.

Contact: Maria Rigter, Entrepreneur - maria_rigter@zonnet.nl

Expiry Date: 01/09/2008

The Expiry Date is automatically set to 1 year after the date the partner search form was completed unless otherwise specified by the contact

To find similar reports, click on a keyword below:
Biomass & Bioenergy : Energy Crops : Ethanol : Liquid Biofuels : Renewable Energy Sources & Systems : Sustainable Transport

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