KARACHI, Feb 5: The expected bumper sugarcane crop of over 60 million tons this season may allow distilleries to produce a record 280,000 to 300,000 tons of ethanol which could fetch $140 million to $150 million in export earnings at average international price of $510 per ton.

Last year 250,000 tons of ethanol were exported.

After the start of crushing season in November last, the distilleries have so far managed to export 12,203 tons of ethanol with bulk of the quantity to European market including Turkey. However, some Far Eastern countries were also keen buyers of ethanol.

Larger cane crop size will enable the sugar mills to produce around 4.5 million tons of white refined sugar which will also result in availability of larger quantity of molasses that will be converted by distilleries into ethanol.As the concept of value-addition begins to sink into millers mind more units have been installed and the number reaches to 14 distilleries from just four in the year 2000.

Mohammed Kasim, A leading sugar mill and distillery owner, told Dawn that the industry was expected around 2.4 million tons of molasses this year. Therefore, he said the installed capacity of distilleries could easily manage to produce around 300,000 tons of ethanol.

Responding to a question, he said that the production ratio between molasses and ethanol was 5:1 i.e. for producing one ton of ethanol five tons of molasses are required. This would mean that around 1.5 million tons of molasses would be consumed by distilleries to produce 0.3 million tons of ethanol.

Mr Kasim, who also heads terminal operators’ representative body, said even after this conversion of molasses into ethanol exporters would still have around 0.6 to 0.8 million tons of molasses at their disposal.

Currently, the export of molasses and ethanol is in full swing and facilities provided by Karachi Port at OP-II, OP-III and DB-I (dry berth one) are par excellent. All these berths have deep draft and most modern loading arm for handling liquid bulk cargoes such as molasses and ethanol.

He said this modern system of handling liquid bulk cargo at KPT was so fast and efficient that a vessel with a capacity of 30,000 tons could be loaded within 48 hours of its berthing. In the entire region, he said such system did not exist. Since ethanol is very sensitive product for being highly inflammable its haulage from distilleries to port is well-calculated with minimal storage before shipment to avoid any mishap or incident of fire, he said.

He said the crushing season may last up to end April in the Sindh province where all sugar mills were currently operating to their full capacity. However some transportation problems for carrying sugarcane from fields to mills are there which would also be resolved in due course of time, he added.