Japan's Mitsui and Co. and US petrochemical producer Dow Chemical have entered into a joint venture agreement to build ethanol and biopolymers plants in Brazil, the companies announced in separate statements Wednesday.
Under the agreement, Mitsui will acquire a 50% stake in Dow subsidiary Santa Vitoria Acucar e Alcool, which operates a sugar plantation in Brazil.
The sugarcane field operations in Minas Gerais will be expanded to produce bioethylene, biopolyethylene and sugar-derived chemicals, Mitsui said. The total investment in the project would be $2 billion, Yuichiro Sera from the company's corporate communications department said.
The ethanol plant in Minas Gerais will have a capacity of 240 million liters/year and the output will be consumed by the planned biopolymers unit that is expected to have a capacity of 350,000 mt/year, Sera said. "The bioethanol output will be produced exclusively for chemical usage," he added.
Construction of the new ethanol plant at Minas Gerais is expected to start in the third quarter of this year after getting regulatory approval, the statement said. It is yet to be decided when construction of the biopolymer unit will begin, Sera added.
