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Kenana Sugar Company, the largest company in the sector in the African country, wants to build an ethanol factory and new sugar mills. Three company executives are in Brazil after business. 'Everyone is eyeing the Brazilian example,' stated Mohamed El Tegani, a director at the organization.
São Paulo - Kenana Sugar Company (KSC), the largest company in the sugar sector in Sudan, wants to find Brazilian partners and suppliers to operate in the construction of sugar and ethanol mills in the African country. Three company executives are in Brazil to discuss the matter: the company's joint director for the marketing sector, Mohamed El Mardi El Tegani, the plant manager, Ali El Sayed, and the marketing officer, Donna Gregg.
"Sugar and energy are two very important subjects nowadays and everyone is eyeing the Brazilian example," stated El Tegani, referring to the fact that Brazil is the largest world producer and exporter of sugar and alcohol and has successfully been using ethanol as fuel for its vehicle fleet for decades. "Brazil has proved itself a success model and we want to do the same," he added.
Representatives from Kenana participated in seminar Sugar and Ethanol Brazil, which took place in São Paulo, and visited the offices of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce. They had three objectives: learning more about the ethanol market, learning more about Brazilian companies in the sector and meeting partners and suppliers.
KSC is a mixed capital company and has as its main shareholders the government of Sudan, of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, as well as private investors. The company boasts the largest integrated sugar factory in the world, that is, a factory that concentrates the whole productive chain.
According to El Tegani, the company has 45,000 hectares of land that produce four million tonnes of sugarcane a year and a factory with a capacity for the grinding of 26,000 tonnes a day. The mill's annual sugar production capacity is 450,000 tons of white sugar. The agroindustrial complex is located 220 kilometres away from country capital Khartoum, in White Nile state, in the central region of the country.
Expansion plan
The company has a plan for expansion over the next 10 years, and that is where the interest in Brazilian partners arises. According to Ali El Sayed, the company intends to start the immediate construction of an ethanol factory, beside the sugar mill that is already in operation, and the new plant will have a capacity for production of 200,000 litres per day. "We want to begin yesterday," stated El Sayed.
For this, Kenana intends to use molasses as raw material, the whole 150,000 tons it produces at the company factory and another 150,000 tonnes to be produced at a new plant, which will go into operation in 2008, and another 100,000 tonnes from other mills in the country. "Apart from that we have another 45,000 hectares available for the planting of sugarcane," stated El Tegani. "We have all the raw material to make production a success. We intend to dominate the entire production process, so as to have flexibility," he added.
El Sayed also stated that the plant they already have also produces 70 MW/hour of electric energy and uses just 40 MW/hour, being able to turn the extra energy to the ethanol factory. "We are self-sufficient in energy and are connected to the national grid," he declared.
But why produce ethanol? KSC is eyeing the greater international demand for alternative fuels. "We believe that the price of the barrel of oil should reach US$ 100," stated El Tegani. Internally, he said that Sudan will adopt a mixture of 10% of alcohol as a catalyst, generating demand for 270 million litres of the product. "Today there is no factory of the kind in the country," he said.
In this sense, they are seeking possible investors in Brazil who may be interested in being partners in the new business, suppliers of equipment and know-how and even engineering and civil construction companies to manage the construction of the plant.
Super-refinery
The company is also after partners in the same sector for another ambitious project: the construction of a new refinery to produce one million tons of sugar a year in Port Sudan, on the Red Sea. The country has plans to increase their annual production of sugar from one million to three million tonnes over the next five or six years. Still in Brazil, the Sudanese intend to visit sugar terminals in Santos Port as they want to build a similar one in Port Sudan.
Kenana is already participating in another sugar project, which is going to start operating in 2008, baptized White Nile Sugar Company. The factory will have a capacity for production of 400,000 tonnes of sugar a year and is budgeted at US$ 460 million, including the crop, irrigation and industrial installations. KSC has 15% participation in the business and is in charge of managing the construction and operation. The company is currently promoting a tender for the purchase of equipment.
Within the same plan, according to El Tegani, the company is executing viability studies for another five sugar mills in the country. Apart from sugar, Kenana is the largest supplier of wood products in Sudan, and has 6,000 hectares of eucalyptus forests. It also supplies fertilizers, agricultural implements and animal feed.
Branches
The company subsidiary Kenana Friesland, an association with a Dutch company, is the largest supplier of dairy products in the country and produces milk, yoghurt and cheese. The company has another branch called Kenana Engineering and Technical Services (Kets), which is responsible for the management of various businesses, like White Nile and a mill in Nigeria, called Savana Sugar Factory. Kets is also participating in tenders for the construction of refineries in Kenya and Ghana.
In all, the company employs 12,000 people, half being temporary workers taken on at harvest time (between November and April) and the remains fixed employees. The company has annual revenues of US$ 400 million. From Brazil, the company imports 50,000 tonnes of raw sugar annually, but this volume may reach 200,000 tonnes.