ASHENEWS reports that the Niger state government has secured a partnership with JS Bioenergy Limited to promote sugarcane farming in the state.
The agreement, which was sealed at the Government House Minna on Thursday, had the Chairman, Niger Foods Limited, Mr. Sammy Adigun, signing on behalf of the state government while the Commercial Director JS Bioenergy, Mr. Sandy Eyal, signed on behalf of the company.
The state governor, Mohammed Umaru-Bago described the agreement as another milestone in his agricultural revolution in the state aimed at promoting the national policy on food security.
The agreement will see to the establishment of large-scale sugarcane cultivation, with a focus on ethanol production on 10,000 hectares of land.
The beginning of the project is slated within the next six months and will cover the construction of a sugarcane plantation.
It will also involve a sugar processing facility with a distillery and a biomass facility capable of producing industrial ethanol for domestic and international markets.
JS Bioenergy will be the provider of the funds necessary to develop the project.
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Both the commercial director of JS Bioenergy Ltd, Eyal, and the Chairman of Niger Foods Limited, Adigun, highlighted the significance of the project to the agricultural drive of the government.
Sugarcane ethanol is an alcohol-based fuel produced by the fermentation of sugarcane juice and molasses. It is a clean, affordable, and low-carbon biofuel, making it a leading renewable fuel for the transportation sector.
The by-products from cane sugar processing, namely the straw and bagasse (cane fibers), can be used to produce cellulosic ethanol, a second-generation biofuel.
The production process uses a lot of water, with every liter of ethanol needing 2860 liters of water. Some studies indicate that converting sugarcane juice to ethanol is a more efficient process, as compared to converting molasses to ethanol because it consumes less water.
