ABEPL launches bamboo sourcing and processing for ethanol production in Assam

Nazira, Dec 25: Assam Bio Ethanol Private Limited (ABEPL), a joint venture of Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) and two Finnish firms, will source bamboo from 18 districts of Assam, including Sivasagar, in the first phase of its operations for production of fuel grade ethanol. For this purpose, aggregation and processing centres have been identified at strategic locations across the sourcing zone of ABEPL.

A team of ABEPL, comprising Tonmoy Chutia and Akash Jyoti Mahanta, assistant manager and executive trainee, respectively, of the supply chain and logistics department of the Numaligarh- based company, recently visited the Kamalabari bamboo plantation developed by Garupawan Joint Forest Management Committee (JFMC) in Nazira co-district. Kamalabari is a tourist spot located in the Geleky reserve forest on the Assam-Nagaland border. At a meeting held at Kamalabari, Chutia and Mahanta apprised villagers and members of the Garupawan JFMC of the need of bamboo farming for ethanol production and urged upon bamboo farmers of Sivasagar district to register with ABEPL's digital supply chain solution platform. They also announced the setting up of a bamboo processing plant (aggregation cum processing centre) at Kalgaon, Geleky.

Chutia told The Assam Tribune that ABEPL has developed an ambitious supply chain model to source bamboo directly from both individual bamboo farmers and bamboo farmer groups. The aggregation cum processing centres will convert the bamboo poles into bamboo chips of approximately one-square- inch size. The bamboo chips thus produced will then be transported to the ABEPL plant at Numaligarh for further processing to produce bio ethanol and other products.

Bamboo is the primary feedstock for NRL, which has an annual consumption capacity of 500 TMT green bamboo (300 TMT dry bamboo) and an annual rated production capacity of 48,900 MT of ethanol.

Chutia said that NRL will require 1,200 tonne of bamboo chips a day, which means two crore bamboo poles a year.

In order to boost bamboo plantations in the region, NRL has also set up three high-tech bamboo nurseries in Assam in collaboration with the State's forest de- partment. Bamboo saplings produced in these three nurseries will be supplied to bamboo farmers in different parts of the Northeast, Chutia said.

He further said that ABEPL will also source bamboo from four districts of Arunachal Pradesh, five districts of Nagaland, and one district of Meghalaya in the first phase of its operations.

ABEPL is driven by economic, social, and environ- mental objectives in the form of uplift of rural economies through additional income for bamboo farmers, employment generation for skilled harvesters, entrepreneurship set-ups, and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.