Sugar cane companies seek ethanol plant deals
South Florida Business Journal - by Julia Neyman
Florida Crystals Corp. is one of two companies at the top of the list to partner with the University of Florida to build a $20 million ethanol plant, university officials said.
U.S. Sugar is negotiating with FPL Energy on a $10 million plant to make ethanol from citrus peels. While both projects would be relatively small in scale, they would be an important step for South Florida to join the ethanol boom.
Though UF officials stressed that all six companies that applied for its project are still in the running, West Palm Beach-based Florida Crystals and Memphis, Tenn.-based Buckeye Technologies were singled out for visits from UF staff.
Florida Crystals and Clewiston-based U.S. Sugar each farm about 180,000 acres, much of it near Lake Okeechobee.
Florida Crystals operates three sugar mills and a plant that uses waste material to generate enough power for 60,000 homes, while U.S. Sugar produces more than 120,000 gallons of orange juice a year from 32,000 acres of groves.
Speakers at the Serve to Preserve Florida Summit on Global Climate Change earlier this month said the Sunshine State produces more plant waste than any other state, 10 percent of the national total. Using this waste doesn't drive up food prices like the use of corn to make ethanol.
The university visited Florida Crystals on July 24, said Gaston Cantens, the sugar company's VP. The final decision should be made in the next month, officials said.
Florida Crystals and Buckeye were able to meet most of the criteria listed in legislative language to build a research and demonstration cellulosic (plant waste) ethanol plant, said Lonnie Ingram, the UF researcher who has developed and patented the technology for cellulosic ethanol.
"There are other people on the list, but these two emerged at the top," he said.
Small scale production
The university's invitation to negotiate, which went out to companies on June 15, called for a facility that would produce 1 million to 2 million gallons of ethanol a year. Ingram said that because of the relatively small volume of ethanol produced - by comparison, corn ethanol plants in Ohio produce 100 million gallons a year - this facility would largely serve research purposes. Any money generated by the ethanol, which will be sold within the state, will go back into financing the plant.
Still, university officials agreed the plant is an important step toward finding an alternative to feed Florida's fuel demand of 8.6 billion gallons a year.
"This is occurring at the intersection of science and commercialization," said Joseph Kays, spokesman for UF's office of research and graduate programs. "We've been doing this for 20 years, starting in petri dishes in the lab, and now we're trying to make it feasible on a commercial level."
According to selection criteria, the 10-acre site must be able to provide up to 100,000 dry tons of cellulosic ethanol a year, plus easy access to gasoline and ethanol blending facilities, suppliers and transportation companies. The site must also have pre-existing on-site labs and technical support staff.
"We already have an industrial site, we already have electricity," Cantens said. "We already do sugar cane research and work very closely with UF's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at their Belle Glade campus."
Buckeye Technologies, which has a facility in northern Florida, was probably singled out because of raw material availability, CEO John Crowe said. "If they're going to create ethanol, they want a site with manufacturing facilities, receiving facilities, excellent rail and trucking opportunities. We have trees and tree residue, so it's a good fit."
An FPL plant and 'a lot of energy'
U.S. Sugar spokeswoman Judy Sanchez said the company is in discussions with FPL Energy to partner on a plant, but she could not give details.
FPL Energy has already signed a letter of intent with Citrus Energy, a Boca Raton company formed in 2006 to build the first commercial plant to turn citrus peels into ethanol.
Citrus Energy has a $2.5 million state grant to build a plant that produces 4 million gallons of ethanol annually. Its advisory board includes former state Senate Majority Leader Ron Silver and Ronald L. Book, one of the state's most successful lobbyists.
Cantens said UF's project comes at a good time, "when there is a lot of energy" for alternative power
"With everything that's happened these last couple of weeks, with the governor's executive orders and the Florida Farm to Fuel Summit [in St. Petersburg], you can sense there was excitement about the whole renewable energy issue," he said. "You've got companies and scientists coming into Florida, and they see it as a stronghold for moving their renewable energy forward."
jneyman@bizjournals.com | (954) 949-7511
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