Ethanol for export

 By JUNIOR UKAHA

The country’s only large scale ethanol producer Ramu Agri Industries Limited (RAIL) is in the process of exporting two million litres of ethanol.

The ethanol will be shipped to South Korea on the vessel Golden Wave, which arrived at the Lae wharf last Friday.

RAIL sales and marketing manager Roy Beerwald on Friday said it would take 72 hours and over 100 workers in the loading process.

“The equivalent of 87 iso-tanks each carrying 23,000 litres of ethanol will be transported from Ramu and Markham valleys making about 48 trips to Lae for this shipment,” Beerwald said. 

Beerwald, whose company is into beef, oil palm and sugar production, said the shipment handling would be done by Melbourne-based company Catalyst Chemicals while the inspection  would be carried out by international inspection company Inter-Tech. 

“RAIL … PNG’s only sugar producer produces a form of alcohol known as ethanol,” Beerwald said.

“The ethanol is produced by fermenting molasses and distilling the fermented beer.

“Molasses is a bi-product of sugar production,” Beerwald said. 

He said molasses is a thick, dark, sweet liquid that is produced from sugar cane after the sugar crystals have been formed and extracted.

“The molasses is then pumped to a distillery where it is converted to ethanol,” Beerwald said. 

Managing director of Catalyst Chemicals Yvonne Lockwood said ethanol was one of the largest solvents used in industries around the world apart from water. 

“It has quite a lot of applications,” Lockwood said. “Ethanol is used in the production of food, paint, and cleaning agents.”

Lockwood, whose company has been assisting RAIL selling its ethanol for the last 18 years, said South Korean-based European company Alcotra is buying the ethanol.

According to RAIL the two million litres of ethanol will be sold for about K3 million. 

The company last year exported 1.7 million litres of ethanol to Japan.