Spanish company Aurantia to invest in Congo's palm oil sector for biodiesel
According to CongoPlus and sources in Brazzaville, Spanish company Aurantia is investing in a cluster of palm plantations in the Republic of Congo with the aim to produce biodiesel from the oil. After a visit with president Denis Sassou-Nguesso, CEO Rafaël Naranjo Anegon announced that Aurantia will be building four oil palm mills to process fresh fruits from a plantation that will cover several thousand hectares.
Anegon said his group has acquired recent experience with the nascent biodiesel industry in Africa and with its potential, most notably in Mozambique, Senegal and Guinea. Feasibility studies are already underway, with the aim to analyse the different plantation and mill sites, and to assess the state of the existing logistical infrastructure in the country. The actual size of the investment was not disclosed.
Congo-Brazzaville is currently a minor producer of palm oil. The country is host to parts of the world's second largest rainforest, that of the Congo Basin (see picture, click to enlarge), which spans the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo-Kinshasa), the Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.
In Congo-Brazzaville, the dense tropical rainforest mainly stretches over the Northern part of the country, whereas in the center and the South, it is covered by mosaic, secondary forest and large savanna type vegetation. Even though the country has strict rules in place to regulate forestry and to make it more sustainable, illegal logging remains a major problem.
However Congo's sustainable bioenergy potential was recently highlighted in a study commissioned by the EU and carried out by the CIRAD, which showed that Congo has around 12 million hectares of land suitable for the establishment of woody energy crop plantations (such as eucalyptus and acacia). This potential was calculated by explicitly taking into account stringent sustainability criteria (earlier post):
biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: oil palm :: plantation :: :: deforestation :: biodiesel :: Congo-Brazzaville ::
A major Canadian company with a vast eucalyptus plantation in Congo recently invested in a 500,000 ton wood chipping plant, one of the world's largest, with the ultimate aim of supplying the rapidly growing global biomass market (earlier post).
Even though the Spanish company's project is expected to yield a significant number of employment opportunities for Congo's largely impoverished population, it did not offer any insights into how it sees itself within the context of sustainability and of the fragility of Congo's environment, neithor into how it would guarantee its palm oil is produced in an environmentally friendly manner. The company is not (yet) listed as a member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, a multi-stakeholder organisation uniting NGOs, governments and the private sector with the aim of making palm oil production more sustainable.
Anegon said his group has acquired recent experience with the nascent biodiesel industry in Africa and with its potential, most notably in Mozambique, Senegal and Guinea. Feasibility studies are already underway, with the aim to analyse the different plantation and mill sites, and to assess the state of the existing logistical infrastructure in the country. The actual size of the investment was not disclosed.
Congo-Brazzaville is currently a minor producer of palm oil. The country is host to parts of the world's second largest rainforest, that of the Congo Basin (see picture, click to enlarge), which spans the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo-Kinshasa), the Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.
In Congo-Brazzaville, the dense tropical rainforest mainly stretches over the Northern part of the country, whereas in the center and the South, it is covered by mosaic, secondary forest and large savanna type vegetation. Even though the country has strict rules in place to regulate forestry and to make it more sustainable, illegal logging remains a major problem.
However Congo's sustainable bioenergy potential was recently highlighted in a study commissioned by the EU and carried out by the CIRAD, which showed that Congo has around 12 million hectares of land suitable for the establishment of woody energy crop plantations (such as eucalyptus and acacia). This potential was calculated by explicitly taking into account stringent sustainability criteria (earlier post):
biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: oil palm :: plantation :: :: deforestation :: biodiesel :: Congo-Brazzaville ::
A major Canadian company with a vast eucalyptus plantation in Congo recently invested in a 500,000 ton wood chipping plant, one of the world's largest, with the ultimate aim of supplying the rapidly growing global biomass market (earlier post).
Even though the Spanish company's project is expected to yield a significant number of employment opportunities for Congo's largely impoverished population, it did not offer any insights into how it sees itself within the context of sustainability and of the fragility of Congo's environment, neithor into how it would guarantee its palm oil is produced in an environmentally friendly manner. The company is not (yet) listed as a member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, a multi-stakeholder organisation uniting NGOs, governments and the private sector with the aim of making palm oil production more sustainable.
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