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Clari­ant Expands Part­ner­ship Net­work with Farm­ers in Oltenia

29.11.2019
Clari­ant, a focused and innov­at­ive spe­cialty chem­ic­al com­pany, and their con­sor­ti­um part­ner Indus­tri­elle Bio­tech­no­lo­gie Bay­ern Net­zwerk GmbH, organ­ized the second work­shop ded­ic­ated to farm­ers in the Oltenia region yes­ter­day. This event is anoth­er mile­stone to reach the object­ive of build­ing long-term rela­tion­ships with farm­ers to ensure a stable feed­stock sup­ply for the sun­li­quid® cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol plant in Podari in the Craiova region. Since 2017, a ded­ic­ated feed­stock crew of four team mem­bers has estab­lished long-term con­tracts with over 200 farm­ers to acquire agri­cul­tur­al residues for the plant. Dur­ing the work­shop, Dragoș Gav­riluţă, Pro­ject Dir­ect­or sun­li­quid® Romania and Paul Popes­cu, Feed­stock Sup­ply and Logist­ics Man­ager at Clari­ant, provided the par­ti­cipants with more inform­a­tion regard­ing the con­struc­tion status of Clariant’s sun­li­quid® plant in Podari. Fur­ther­more, they presen­ted the oppor­tun­it­ies for farm­ers brought by this pro­ject and the res­ults obtained in the 2019 har­vest cam­paign. ​“Farm­ers from Oltenia are the first ones in Romania to turn agri­cul­tur­al residues into an addi­tion­al source of rev­en­ue while deliv­er­ing their straw to the sun­li­quid® plant where it is trans­formed into advanced bio­fuels. Our object­ive is to cre­ate a well-developed sup­ply chain through strong part­ner­ships with the loc­al farm­ers and we have already made some import­ant steps in this dir­ec­tion,” said Dragoș Gav­riluţă. The attendees were pleased to learn that they can par­ti­cip­ate in mul­tiple ways in the feed­stock sup­ply chain, e.g. as a straw sup­pli­er or as a pro­vider of related straw logist­ic ser­vices, for example bal­ing, load­ing, trans­port or vari­ous types of stor­ing. Clari­ant star­ted its har­vest­ing cam­paign back in 2018 with an ini­tial 3,000 tons of straw col­lec­ted. In 2019, around 20,000 tons of wheat straw have been col­lec­ted from a total land sur­face of approx. 8,000 hec­tares. The ramp-up of the sup­ply chain will con­tin­ue to finally reach 250,000 tons for full-scale plant capa­city. With the part­ner­ship con­tracts con­cluded so far, Clari­ant has already secured the major­ity of the raw mater­i­al needed for the sun­li­quid® plant in Podari. ​“The work­shop con­vinced me that a long-term part­ner­ship with Clari­ant is indeed an oppor­tun­ity to obtain some addi­tion­al income from straw that was not of any bene­fit to us in the past. This money can be used to invest in agri­cul­tur­al machinery to provide fur­ther ser­vices with­in the sup­ply chain,” stated one of the par­ti­cipants at the event. Besides the farm­er work­shop, Clari­ant has taken import­ant meas­ures to effi­ciently coordin­ate the straw sup­ply chain for the sun­li­quid® plant. For example, since 2019, straw har­vest oper­a­tions are coordin­ated, man­aged and mon­itored through a digit­al applic­a­tion that enables Clariant’s feed­stock sup­ply team to closely mon­it­or all activ­it­ies and cor­res­pond­ing machinery for bal­ing, trans­port and stor­age. The Clari­ant plant in Podari brings to Romania an indus­tri­al innov­a­tion for pro­du­cing cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol from agri­cul­tur­al residues using the sun­li­quid® tech­no­logy. Once the plant is oper­a­tion­al, 250,000 tons of straw will be needed annu­ally to pro­duce 50,000 tons of cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol. Clari­ant is invest­ing over EUR 100 mil­lion in this pro­ject, which also receives around EUR 40 mil­lion of fund­ing from the European Uni­on. Cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol is an advanced and truly sus­tain­able bio­fuel, which is almost car­bon neut­ral and pro­duced from agri­cul­tur­al residues such as wheat straw by using Clariant’s award-win­ning sun­li­quid® tech­no­logy. Its import­ance increases sig­ni­fic­antly con­sid­er­ing the sus­tain­ab­il­ity reg­u­la­tions adop­ted by the European Uni­on, which aim to sup­port the use of renew­able energy in the trans­port­a­tion sec­tor. As a res­ult, the cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol pro­duced in Podari will have a sig­ni­fic­ant eco­nom­ic impact at region­al level.

Key facts on Clariant’s sun­li­quid® cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol plant in Podari:

  • The invest­ment made by Clari­ant in Podari is the largest ongo­ing one in the Craiova region.
  • Over 800 new jobs will be cre­ated dur­ing the con­struc­tion phase.
  • The sun­li­quid® plant will lead to the cre­ation of green jobs in the pre­dom­in­antly rur­al area of Podari: around 100 per­man­ent full-time employ­ees in the plant and around 300 per­sons out­side the plant (field/​logistics).
  • The sun­li­quid® plant is being built on a 98,000 sqm area observing the highest tech­no­logy standards.
  • The sun­li­quid® tech­no­logy allows to pro­duce cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol sus­tain­able and com­pet­it­ively at com­mer­cial scale with max­im­um green­house gas emis­sion savings.
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