US-based renewable chemicals and fuels company, Amyris has signed an agreement with ETH Bioenergia specialising in the production of electric energy, sugar and ethanol to form a joint venture for the production of Biofene in Brazil.
As per the MOU, the joint venture will be controlled by ETH and exclusive marketing rights of Biofene produced will be given to Amyris. Production of Biofene will be carried out at the Greenfield mills of ETH located in Brazil by employing a sugarcane crush capacity of 2 Mt. Production is expected to commence by 2014.
ETH presently operates nine units for creating clean and renewable energy and is in the process of adding new investments for producing and developing new applications for products that are based on sugar cane. The company has already invested R$6 billion in order to enhance the total production capacity of its units to 3 billion litres of ethanol and 2,700 GWh of electric energy by the year 2013 and will invest a further R$2 billion towards this end.
This is the sixth production agreement for Amyris, which has production agreements across three continents. The company is enhancing the production of Biofene particularly in the US, Europe and Brazil.