Ethanol producer Green fuel is targeting to increase annual production of the commodity from 93 million litres to 220 million by 2015. The general manager of the firm, Mr Graeme Smith, last Friday told a Green Business Indaba that the ethanol project was an energy revolution that Africa required to meet demand for power and fuel. “If we expand our land to about 40 000 hectares, by the next three years we will be able to produce 220 million litres annually. We have been waiting sincerely for Government to pledge enough support towards making it mandatory to blend a certain percentage of fuel imports,” he said.
Mr Smith said the ethanol would also be exported to the rest of Sadc.
“We are already in the process of setting up sites in Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi. He said the increase in production would also have an effect on the employment figures. Currently we employ about 4 500 workers and we are targeting to reach 10 000 and 15 000 by 2015 and 2017 respectively,” Mr Smith said.
Turning to power generation, Mr Smith said this would increase from the current 6 megawatts to 15 megawatts by 2015. Mr Smith, however, said the low uptake of the ethanol was as a result of most service stations not having many tanks for storage.
“You will find out that several service stations have two tanks for diesel and petrol which makes it difficult for them to store the blended petrol,” he said.
Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) boss Mr Joseph Kanyekanye, said while industry agreed to the concept of green business, it could not afford as it was performing below capacity.
“Green issues are a reality, but as industry we are saying particular time frames should be set which allow companies to come up with workable plans that do not affect their production. In simpler terms, we are saying green issues without viability would not make sense in business,” he said. — New Ziana.