Praj Industries to set up demo commercial plant with $30 mn outlay

The plant will be used for lignocellulosic to ethanol conversion in India

Praj Industries Limited, a Pune-based biofuels manufacturing company, will be setting up a 10-million-litre-a-year demo commercial plant for lignocellulosic to ethanol conversion in India.

Praj initiated the 'lignocellulose to ethanol' programme to address the need to expand ethanol production from non-food, agri-residue. The company is currently pursuing feasibility on the biorefinery model based on a sugar platform.

“The engineering package is ready and Praj has signed a memorandum of understanding with a customer for the location. Praj is in discussions with other strategic investors and partners for participation. The company expects the project cost to be between $25 million and $30 million, and hopes to break ground in early 2013,” the company said in a filing to the BSE on Wednesday.

Praj Industries provides integrated process engineering and solutions for bioethanol, brewery, water and wastewater and process equipment globally. On Tuesday, it demonstrated in Munich its advancement in the development of commercial demo plant for lignocellulosic to ethanol.

"The successful demonstration of various parameters at the demo-commercial plant will put Praj at the forefront of the biobased economy and in the race for commercial scale second-generation biofuels," Pramod Chaudhari, executive chairman, Praj, said while delivering a welcome address at the recent F O Licht, World Ethanol Conference at Munich.

"While this plant size is appropriate for emerging markets, with our past experience of quick scale up, it will be well within Praj's capability to scale the capacity even up to 10 times," he added.

Praj Industries' scrip is currently trading at Rs 46.25 on the BSE, up 2.44%, over the previous close of Rs 45.15 a share.