Taipei, Aug. 29, 2008 (CENS)--Eyeing the promising outlook of the lucrative bio-ethanol business in the wake of spiraling oil prices globally, major Taiwan firms as Taiwan Sugar Corporation, Vedan Enterprise Corp. and Taiwan Cellular Ethanol Corp. will set up bio-ethanol plants in Taiwan.

These firms aim to tap business opportunities generated by the new regulation stipulating that gasoline sold in Taiwan by 2011, dubbed E3, will have to contain 3% bio-ethanol.

Taiwan Cellular will invest NT$3 billion (US$95.23 million at US$1:NT$31.5) to set up two plants in Changhua Coastal Industrial Zone and Pingtung each with annual production capacity of 43,000 kiloliters, with the proposed plant in Changhua Coastal Industrial Zone to begin construction by the end of this year.

The state-run Taiwan Sugar will also budget NT$3 billion (US$95.23 million) to set up a bio-ethanol facility in its Nanchin sugar plant in Chaiyi County, southern Taiwan, with the proposed bio-ethanol plant to turn sugarcane into 100,000 to 120,000 kiloliters of bio-ethanol per year. If all goes as planned, the plant will begin construction sometime in 2009 and begin mass production by 2010 at the earliest or 2011 at the latest.

Vedan said it would cooperate with the state-run CPC Corporation to set up a joint bio-ethanol plant at its Shalu plant in Taichung County, central Taiwan, which will begin mass production in September 2009 with annual capacity reaching 60,000 kiloliters. Half of the output will be for food and the remaining for industrial and automotive uses.

Taiwan Cellular said it would first use baked goods as raw material to produce bio-ethanol, and later sugarcane scrap to reduce production costs.

Taiwan Sugar noted it would produce 99% pure bio-ethanol as an automotive fuel additive, for which such production would need sugarcane fields covering at least 30,000 hectares. The company called for the Council of Agriculture to subsidize farmers NT$90,000 a year as incentive to grow sugarcane.

With annual consumption of 10 million kiloliters of gasoline in Taiwan, demand for automotive bio-ethanol is expected to reach 300,000 kiloliter per year after the regulation enforcing the use of E3 fuel becomes effective in 2011.

(by Ben Shen)