Living in Peru : your everyday companion

(LIP-wb) -- President Alan Garcia maintained on Friday that Peru will initiate an "agrarian revolution" with the development of a plant project that will produce ethanol from sugar cane cultivation in Peru's northern region of Piura.

Peru's Chief of State emphasized that this project will create 600 direct and indirect jobs for four years and will help in reducing the country's petroleum consumption.

Garcia made these statements at a special ceremony for the signing of a contract with the American company Maple who will invest 100 million dollars in the project.

According to Maple's website, the ethanol project will initially produce 30 to 40 million gallons per year and growing up to 100 million gallons per year after five years. The Project primarily intends to sell its production to the international markets and the United-States. It has already committed buyers for all of its production.

The project's focus market, the United-States, has seen a tremendous growth in demand due to regulatory changes in the last few years. It is essentially the obligation, enacted so far by 17 states (including California and New-York), to mix ethanol with motor gasoline in a proportion of 10%, which has created this market. Peru, where a mandatory legislation was passed recently, can also become a possible market in the near future.

The project includes the construction and operation of a 30 to 40 million gallons per year ethanol distillery, related port and shipping facilities as well as cane planting and harvesting.
The power plant to be constructed -approximately 7MW - as part of the ethanol plant will utilize the bagasse, a by-product of the cane milling process, as fuel for its boiler. This efficient and environmentally friendly process allows the Project to generate its own electricity needed for the industrial and agricultural process.
In order to ship the distillery's production abroad, adequate port facilities, consisting of a tank farm, dedicated submarine pipeline and a mooring berth will be constructed.

The valleys in Peru's northern coast are traditional cane growing areas where Maple is looking to secure approximately 10,000 hectares through buying, leasing land or buying cane from independent growers.

This area is the best location in Peru for growing sugar cane. Ideal temperature conditions, combined with extremely low rainfall and availability of water for irrigation from the nearby Andes, allow for year-round harvesting. This situation, unique in the world, explains why Peru, in spite of its many agricultural problems, still produces one of the highest yields of cane per hectare in the world.

Peru is currently the center of Maple's operations. The company entered the country in 1992 and has since then developed ownership of a substantial range of assets. These include the Aguaytía Gas and Power Project, a refinery and refined product distribution operation in the Jungle and several exploration blocks.