ETHANOL is now emerging as an important export item for the country’s sugar industry, drastically reducing its dependence on much cheaper foreign sales of molasses.
As many as 15 distilleries — seven in Sindh and eight in Punjab — are converting molasses into ethanol, operating at around 90 per cent capacity to produce average 2.2 million tons per annum. However, the output and exports of the product fluctuates with the variation in the size of the sugar crop.
However, during current season with the bumper cane crop of over 55 million tons, the production of molasses has jumped to 2.50 million tons.
According to official figures for current season, around 250,000 tons of ethanol have fetched foreign exchange worth $245 million, sold at a price of around $975 per ton. Ethanol is in great demand in the Middle East and the Far East.
In the past molasses used to be exported cheap at a price ranging from $40 to $100 per ton depending on the global demand and supply.
Mohammed Kasim Hasham, chairman Mehran Sugar Mills, told Dawn that since there is still strong demand for ethanol in the world market, exports are expected to touch 400,000 tons.
Since the last couple of years, Mr Hasham said the industry was exporting ethanol through ISO tankers (containers) best known as titanic.
This has placed Pakistan amongst the few countries using state of the art technology in the entire chain of ethanol trade. The use of ISO tankers has helped export ethanol at higher prices and has also made it possible to export it throughout the year and without using tankers.
With the increased production and export of ethanol, molasses export has come down drastically to 33,000 tons in the current season only because the bulk of it had been used for making ethanol. Though Pakistan is world’s seventh largest cane producer, it is not a big player in global sugar, molasses or ethanol trade. However, it has recently appeared on the world map by producing all grades of ethanol. The finest grade of ethanol (99.97 per cent purity), known fuel grade, is also produced in the country.
The other grade, ENA (extra neutral alcohol) with a purity of 97 per cent, is used in edibles and drinks. The industrial alcohol (B grade) has 95-96 per cent purity.
Fuel grade ethanol is blended in a ten per cent ratio with regular gasoline to produce E-10 gasoline. A pilot project for ethanol-blended gasoline (E-10 gasoline) was launched by Pakistan State Oil (PSO) in 2006. It has been well received by both motorbike and car ownersalike.
Presently, the PSO has 29 outlets in Sindh with an average sale of 65,000 liters of E-10 gasoline per day based on six monthly average.
Since the global energy crisis, fuel grade ethanol made from sugarcane or corn is finding wider acceptance. Brazil is the largest producer of sugarcane ethanol. Global fuel ethanol consumption is forecast to rise by 3.4 per cent during current year after a growth of one per cent last year.
If Pakistan has to improve upon its current standing in global ethanol trade it will have to enhance cane production by introducing new varieties of seeds and providing incentives to growers. Lower Sindh is ideal for cane crop and the government should ban cultivation of cotton crop in this region, to divert more area for cane and rice as both these crops need a lot of moisture, suggests Mohammed Kasim Hasham.
The country’s 80 sugar mills with an average daily crushing capacity of 300,000 tons of cane are operating at 35 per cent of their installed capacity. Owing to shortage of cane these mills normally keep their boiler heated for only five months in a year. Therefore, efforts should be made to enhance cane cultivation to produce more sugar, molasses and ethanol and to earn more foreign exchange.