More investors and lenders including the Independent Petroleum Association of the Philippines (IPAP), Chemrez, and Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) are seriously looking into sweet sorghum ethanol as a better alternative fuel investment.

Nicomedes Eleazar, director of the Department of Agriculture (DA)-attached Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR), said both the IPAP and LBP had sought a briefing from the DA’s BAR on the potential of sweet sorghum ethanol as an investment area following the promising feasibility studies (FS) conducted by BAR on the biofuel feedstock.

Besides, BAR had earlier agreed together with Rusni Distilleries and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-arid Tropics (Icrisat) for a technical cooperation for the Philippines’ adoption of Rusni’s technology on sweet sorghum ethanol plant in the country.

"All of the members of the Independent Petroleum Association are interested in sweet sorghum when we held a briefing for them two weeks ago. Land Bank also brought five sugarcane farmers’ cooperatives in our meeting in Lipa, Batangas to inquire on its potential," Eleazar said in an interview.

He said among the IPAP members, Seaoil, Unioil, and even existing coconut methyl ester (CME) producer Chemrez had expressed interest to look at investing in sweet sorghum ethanol.

"The small players are ready to make the investments. They just want technical information," he said.

Seaoil President Glenn Yu confirmed earlier that Seaoil has started due diligence work on sweet sorghum ethanol. Yu said the due diligence work includes the company’s sending its own study delegate to the Mariano Marcos State University (MMSU) in Batac, Ilocos Norte where the FS had been conducted and to the Rusni Distilleries in India which runs the world’s first commercially-run sweet sorghum ethanol plant.

Even without a local biofuel production, Seaoil is now distributing sugarcane-based ethanol at a 10 percent blend. Seaoil is also set to put up a sugarcane-fed ethanol processing plant at a rate of 100,000 liters of sugarcane per day. Flying V is also set to establish its own CME plant as it already distributes biodiesel in its stations.

Eleazar said five farmers’ cooperatives in Batangas producing sugarcane are interested in planting sweet sorghum which may be sent to an ethanol plant that they could later own to be financed by LBP. What is interesting about sweet sorghum, he said, is that it can be an alternative feedstock to an ethanol plant using sugarcane as feedstock.