T

he largest palm-oil producer in the country, Wilmar Indonesia, is developing a palm oil-based aviation biofuel in the company’s biofuel plant in Gresik, East Java with an investment of about US$80 million, company executive said.

The company, through its subsidiary PT Wilmar Nabati Indonesia, is collaborating with Elevance Renewable Sciences Inc, a US-based company to produce the aviation biofuel.

“This will be the very first biofuel plant for jets in Indonesia. We have started developing the biofuel because this is the energy source of the future,” PT Wilmar Nabati Indonesia executive director Taufik Tamin said.

The bio-refinery commenced operations in December 2011 and it will produce 500 tons of biofuel per day by the fourth quarter of 2012. About 80 percent of the biofuel would be biodiesel while the remaining 20 percent of the products will be bio-olefin, the most important component for aviation biofuel, he said. However, the bio-olefin that they produced this year still needed further processing, Taufik said. “We still need to process the chemical components further and it may take several years to produce ready-to-use aviation biofuel suitable for jets,” he said.

Taufik added that Wilmar was seeking to cooperate with gas and oil company PT Pertamina in the production of jet biofuel.

There was a chance that they would work together with Pertamina to market the developed bio jet-fuel in the future, he said.

Moreover, he said that the firm aimed to expand their Gresik operation from the current 75 hectares to 100 hectares by the end of the year as they were planning to build additional plants.

PT Wilmar Nabati Indonesia is going to set up at least three new plants in Gresik; a methyl ester sulfonates plant, a soap plant and a flour mill.

They plan to start expanding their business into flour next year as the bakery business is booming in the country due to strong economic growth.

“We aim to invest $1 billion in Gresik in the next five years because this is a very strategic location that will connect us to Kalimantan and other regions in eastern Indonesia,” he added.

As of today, the Gresik plant investment is worth $400 million while as a group, Wilmar Indonesia’s total investment stands at $2.4 billion. (nfo)