Esteban Fuentes
10/29/2020 3:25 PM
Clarín.com
Rural
Updated 10/29/2020 3:28 PM
The Bio4 company announced today that it halted the production of bioethanol due to the rise in production costs and the freezing of the price of bioethanol.
"Since December 2019, the price of our product has only increased by 10% and costs led by corn, the exchange rate and inflation have increased more than 50%, generating losses that are already unsustainable," he warned in a statement from the company.
In this sense, the company, which is located in Río Cuarto, highlighted that
the personnel working at the plant were suspended
.
"The company has been making an enormous effort for two years, but this situation forces them to stop and suspend staff, waiting for a price recomposition by the Secretary of Energy, in order to reverse this situation as soon as possible," they warned.
It should be remembered that recently the Government had updated the value of biofuels 15 days ago.
It established the acquisition price of bioethanol made from sugar cane at $ 32,789 per liter, and the same value for that produced from corn
, both for its mandatory mixture with naphtha.
He also set a rise for biodiesel, reaching $ 48,533 per ton.
In both cases, these values
represent an increase of 10%, compared to the prices that were in force until now.
But the Maiz Bioethanol Chamber had warned on that occasion that
the increase should have been at least 30%
.
"It leaves us in a situation of bankruptcy. The price of our raw material increased more than 50% since May, we have supplies in dollars, and they had us frozen for 11 and a half months," said Patrick Adam, Executive director of the chamber that groups to companies in the sector.
"To top it off, at least before it said minimum price, which gave you a chance to improve the price a bit, now it is a fixed price," he had warned at the time.
Precisely, a report from the Rosario Stock Exchange explained that during the nine months that the value was frozen, the price of corn increased by 44%.
"Naturally, given such an increase in the value of raw materials and the stagnation of the price of biofuel, the ratio of bioethanol / corn was deteriorating month after month," the Rosario Stock Exchange warned.
Even the new value set in October for bioethanol makes the bioethanol / corn ratio touch a new historical low of 2.37 kilos of corn per liter of bioethanol.
According to the entity, the second difficulty facing the biofuels sector is the
sharp reduction in demand due to the interruption of a large number of economic activities,
which had its greatest impact in Argentina in April and May.
Weak demand imposed a severe cap on the production of both corn-based ethanol and sugarcane.
“In April 2020, the bioethanol industry produced 76% less than in April 2019. The drop was greater in the sugarcane segment, which was cut by 98%, versus corn, which fell by 69 % ”, Highlights the report.
May was also a critical month with a year-on-year drop in production of 69%, although there was a partial recovery in the sugarcane-based bioethanol industry.
The months of June, July and August recorded year-on-year drops of 29%, 12% and 30%, respectively.
In this sense, the company, located in Río Cuarto, had invested $ 400,000 in May of this year to reconvert part of its facilities in order to
produce pharmacopoeial alcohol in
response to the demand for biofuel.
Bio4 was the first Argentine company to make fuel ethanol from corn and is one of the 5 that exist today in Argentina.
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