Zambia Sugar plans major expansion, to produce ethanol

Zambia Sugar Plc, the country's largest sugarcane plantation and processing company, plans to raise sugar output by almost 70% to 440,000 tons by 2011 to meet rising local demand, to supply exports to the EU and to produce ethanol.

Zambia Sugar [*no website] said in an environmental assessment report submitted to the Environmental Council of Zambia (ECZ) that it planned to increase sugar production to 440,000 tons in 2010/11 from 260,000 this year. The firm also plans to start producing bioethanol at its Nakambala Estate plantation in Mazabuka, 125km south of Lusaka, once permission is granted for its expansion programme.

Zambia Sugar did not indicate how much it would spend to expand its mill and area under cultivation to reach its new production targets. The report said the firm would increase its hectarage from its current 11,050 hectares to 16,995 hectares to lift cane production to a peak of 3,25-million tons by 2010/11 from 1,8-million tons currently.

Even though no details were released on how much ethanol the company will be producing, we can more or less deduce the potential, by looking at the feedstock. "It is envisaged that molasses produced at Nakambala will be used as a source for conversion to ethanol," said the report.

If 3.25 million tons of sugarcane yield 440,000 tons of white sugar, then Zambia Sugar has a cane conversion rate of around 7.4%. Molasses (all grades) has a residue-to-product ratio of around 0.2, meaning that for each ton of sugar produced, some 200kg of the feedstock becomes available (see FAO); in total, some 88,000 tons. At an average ethanol conversion ratio of around 35% (for all grades of molasses), the total biofuel production potential from the byproduct in 2011 would be around 31,000 tons. The company did not disclose whether bagasse, the major byproduct of sugarcane processing, would be used to generate electricity.

Maximizing the technology mix and taking a high input scenario, Zambia has some 9.5 million hectares of land suitable for rainfed sugarcane:
ethanol :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: sugarcane :: molasses :: bagasse :: Zambia :: Africa ::

Zambia Sugar, majority owned by SA’s Illovo Sugar, currently exports 10% of its white sugar to the European Union under a preferential sugar export treaty, while 50% is consumed within Zambia and the rest exported to other southern and east African countries. The company said it would start to produce ethanol from sugar by-product molasses.

Mollasses was currently sold to farmers for stock feed and also exported to SA, it said. Zambia Sugar, which is listed on the Lusaka Stock Exchange), employs a total of 5 102 workers, about 3 346 of them as seasonal workers during the cane cutting peak period.

More information:
On land availability, see the data at the Global Agro-Ecological Assessment for Agriculture in the 21st Century, produced by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and the FAO. Inside the website (optimized for Internet Explorer browsers), check under spreadsheets > additional > sugarcane.