China's Guangxi State Farm Bureau and a Philippine oil firm will spend $350 million to develop 4-5 ethanol plants in the country in the next two to five years, an executive with the local partner said on Sunday.
Fernando Martinez, chairman of local oil retailer Eastern Petroleum Corp, said the joint venture will look for plantations, and put up plants with an annual capacity of 150,000 to 200,000 tonnes of ethanol each.
He said the plants would initially use cassava as feed stock, but may also consider sugarcane. "We plan to either go into contract growing with farmers or lease plantations of up to 350,000 hectares to grow the feedstock," Martinez told Reuters by phone.
"We are starting to plant cassava in the next three months. We are targetting 5,000-10,000 hectares of cassava plantations this year," Martinez said. It takes eight months for cassava, a root crop, to mature before harvesting. He said his firm has identified farms in the provinces of Cagayan, Tarlac, Pampanga, Batangas and Mindoro, all on Luzon island, for the project.