Sao Paulo: Brazilian businessman Eike Batista, once the country’s richest man, has announced that a Gulf investor is set to invest $500 million in his new project, which focuses on using modified sugarcane to boost sustainable fuel production, reported Reuters.
The project has already secured $500 million from Brazilinvest, a private development bank based in São Paulo. Batista told Reuters that an additional $500 million investment from a strategic investor in the United Arab Emirates will be finalised this week.
Batista, whose commodities and energy empire collapsed more than a decade ago, is aiming for a comeback. His planned comeback, betting on a specially bred “supercane,” has drawn skepticism from some critics in Brazil’s well-established ethanol industry, but the businessman said his technology has passed a decade of testing.
“Supercane is our revolution,” said Batista in a Friday interview.
He mentioned that the project, set to reach 70,000 hectares of planted sugarcane when it reaches maturity, could eventually generate over 1 billion liters of ethanol and around 979,000 metric tonnes of biodegradable packaging made from biomass derived from processed cane.
A processing facility in Rio de Janeiro state will utilize the ethanol it produces to generate sustainable aviation fuel. Batista envisions eventually establishing 20 such modules, each covering 70,000 hectares.
“I believe sugar mill owners in Brazil today, over the next five, 10, 15, 20 years will replace their current crops with this new sugarcane, which has a different motor,” Batista said.
