Australia Heck Group to up ethanol capacity

Australia’s Heck Group, the smallest of the country’s four ethanol producers, is upgrading its Rocky Point distillery in Queensland. The company is expanding its capacity from 5 million liters per year (lpy) to 35 million lpy. The upgrade process has been underway since August 2008, and there has been no production of ethanol since then. Heck has been using molasses, a by-product of raw sugar production, from its Rocky Point sugar mill for producing ethanol, and post-expansion, it will switch to using sorghum as feedstock. A company official said, however, that they do not have enough molasses to support the increased capacity. Australian ethanol makers have been expanding or aligning capacity to produce more fuel grade ethanol, as compared with industrial and beverage grade in anticipation of higher demand from ethyl tertiary butyl ether producers in Japan. The Petroleum Association of Japan, of which nine Japanese refiners are members, is obliged to blend 200 million liters of ETBE with gasoline in fiscal 2009 to 2010 and 840 million liters of ETBE in fiscal 2010 to 2011. (April 1, 2009)