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Brazil’s ECB Group to Build Renewalable Diesel Plant in Paraguay
Thursday, April 11, 2019Paraguay President Mario Abdo Benítez has signed an agreement for the construction of a renewable diesel plant. The biodiesel plant will use soyabean oil extracted with renewable hexane, animal fats and used cooking oil as feedstock. The memorandum of understanding was signed last February with Erasmo Carlos Battistella, president of Brazilian investment holding company ECB Group, to continue the group’s investments in Paraguay, according to Biodiesel Magazine.
ECB’s largest investment was the US$800M Omega Green renewable diesel complex, South America’s first second-generation biofuels project of its kind, according to ECB. The plant production capacity will be up 693,000 gallons/day (2.6M litres) of renewable diesel and synthetic paraffinic kerosene, mostly destined for export markets such as Europe and the USA.
The Omega Green plant would be built on the banks of the Paraguay River, with a logistics port and terminal. It was expected to add more than US$8bn to the estimated gross domestic product of Paraguay over 10 years and benefit around 10,000 small farmers with added soyabean demand. ECB aimed to start plant construction this year, which was expected to last 30 months, with full production projected in 2022.