Sugar companies, govt eye truce on ethanol ban from sugarcane juice

No rollback of December 7 order; firms call for one-time waiver

With sugar firms protesting against the government decision to halt production of ethanol from sugarcane juice and syrup in 2023-24 supply year, the Centre along with oil marketing companies (OMCs) are trying to work out a compromise formula.

This could include a higher price for ethanol produced from B-heavy and C-heavy mola­sses and also allowing some portion of the ethanol to be produced from juice after augmenting sugar supplies in 2023-24. However, there won’t be any rollback of the December 7 order that stopped production of ethanol from sugarcane juice and syrup for the 2023-24 supply year, which started in