The entrepreneur allocated EUR80 million of the group’s money for a bioethanol plant in Zimnicea (SE Romania), where the InterAgro group is headquartered.
The entire Romanian biofuel market is worth around EUR350 million-EUR400 million per year.
“The raw material comes from group’s production because InterAgro exploits more than 50,000 ha of arable land per year. We use the group’s entire corn harvest [for the production of bioethanol],” explained Octavian Stanculet, general manager of Bio Fuel Energy, the company in charge of InterAgro’s bioethanol business.
But the manager of InterAgro’s bioethanol refinery adds that the group’s corn harvest covers around half the 300,000 ton/year capacity of the processing facility, so the remaining raw materials are bought from the market. One third of the plant’s production, i.e. 80,000 tons, is accounted for by bioethanol, while the rest is divided between livestock fodder and fusel oil.
InterAgro, a group with revenues of around EUR650 million in 2011, has mainly operations in agriculture and the chemical industry.
Niculae’s bioethanol business has been on the rise for the last three years, since it started processing corn. Data of the Finance Ministry shows that last year Biofuel Energy’s turnover was EUR41 million, with revenue set to increase to EUR55 million this year.
In fact, the Romanian bioethanol market will be on an upward trend in the next eight years, considering that European Union norms require gasoline suppliers to sell only fuel with a 5% bioethanol content, with the percentage to rise gradually to 20% by 2020.
“Only 15% of production remains in Romania, we export the rest to countries where we have contracts, like the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy,” said Stanculet.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)