Sugar mills bid to supply 300 million litres of ethanol

Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is looking to expand the sugarcane basket to increase farmers’ income, the domestic sugar mills have offered to supply 300 million litres (ML) of ethanol to the public sector oil marketing companies (OMCs).

In the latest 3rd expression of interest (EOI) round floated by the OMCs on Dec 25 indicating a requirement of 940 ML of ethanol, the mills have offered to supply about 300 ML.

“Currently, OMCs are examining these bids and are expected to make allocations in a few days,” Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA) said on Monday.

Against a requirement of 4.59 billion litres (BL) to achieve the mandated 10 percent ethanol blending in fuel, OMCs have so far allocated about 3.66 BL of ethanol for supply in ethanol supply year (ESY) 2021-22.

Meanwhile, owing to fall in global prices of raw sugar, “not many export contracts happened in the last one month or so,” beyond the 3.8–4 million tonnes (MT) of sugar shipment agreements which had already been signed, the Association informed.

Since almost 9 months are left in the current season, the mills are still waiting for an opportune time to enter into further export contracts.

Citing information furnished by mills and its own estimates, ISMA said total sugar sales in the current season (Oct-Sep) up to November 2021 stood at 4.75 MT against domestic sales quota of 4.65 MT fixed by the Centre.

ISMA will procure satellite images in the 2nd week of January 2022. Based on the images of the cane area yet to be harvested, trend of recovery, yield and drawl percentage of cane, the industry body will announce its second advance estimates of sugar production for the current 2021-22 sugar season.

Meanwhile, 492 mills were in operation in India as on December 31, 2021, and produced more than 11.55 MT of sugar compared to 11.07 MT produced by 481 mills in the corresponding period last season.

In Maharashtra, 189 sugar mills, in operation, have produced 4.58 MT of sugar against 179 mills posting an output of nearly 4 MT.

In Uttar Pradesh, 119 sugar mills have produced almost 3.1 MT of sugar so far compared to 3.37 MT last season. Similarly, the crushing season in other states, including Karnataka, Bihar, Gujarat etc are also in progress.