Karnataka's second bio-diesel plant to come up near Devanahalli

A bio-diesel manufacturing unit with a 50-tonne daily capacity will be set up near Devanahalli in four months, Karnataka State Biofuel Development Board chairman YB Ramakrishna told DNA on the sidelines of a World Biofuel Day event at IISc here on Wednesday.

The Devanahalli unit will be the state’s second bio-diesel unit. The first one was inaugurated in Peenya Industrial Area on February 20.

The second unit will be developed by Southern Biodiesel Technologies. Company director Abhishek Mudram said that the unit would attain half its capacity in one-and-a-half months’ time.

Ramakrishna, however, insisted that the unit had to attain 75% of the capacity before the launch.

The proximity of biofuel farmlands at Doddaballapur and cheaper land prices were the reason why Devanahalli was chosen for locating the unit. Mudram asserted that the bio-diesel unit would benefit the city.

Explaining why bio-diesel was yet to catch the imagination of motorists, Ramakrishna said: “The Centre has mandated that vehicle engines must be equipped to use petrol or diesel with 5% blend bio-fuel.

However, the non-availability of ethanol-blended fuel has resulted in engine manufacturers failing to come up with the prescribed engines.”

Also, there was a scarcity of biofuel crops and the Centre’s pricing policy too was discouraging.

“The Centre has fixed the price of biofuel at `27 per litre, while the cost of production varies from `35-40. The state-owned oil companies may afford to go by the central policy but it is a loss to private producers,” he said.

Ramakrishna said it helps producers only if they sell huge quantities of biofuel to customers like the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) which is not only the largest biofuel buyer in the country but also buys it at a price that is slightly less than the production cost.

He also said that Karnataka had 13.5 lakh hectares of wasteland/dryland where biofuel crops like neem, jatropa, pongamia, mahua and simarouba could be cultivated. “Growers need to wait only for a year to reap the benefits for the rest of their lives,” he said.

The board had helped plant three lakh seedlings on 3,200 farmers’ land across the state in 2009.