Castor Pilot production in Brazil

Main features

In October 2009, Eco-Carbone has launched a pilot castor production in the State of Bahia, Brazil. This pilot includes about 1100ha of castor crop which has been planted on rented land with roughly 60% under rain-fed conditions (one crop a year) and 40% under irrigation (two crops a year in rotation with soybean). The expected annual castor production would reach about 2300t of grains to be sold to a contracted crushing company.

Rationale

Eco-Carbone has decided to test castor development for the following reasons:

•    Quick cash generation: castor is an annual crop which can be harvested 3 to 5 months after planting;
•    Well-priced and growing market: about 5% a year with high-valued oil for chemical applications (bio-plastics and lubricants) and interesting co-products including cake for bio-fertilizers, bio-pesticides;
•    Agricultural and industrial complement to Jatropha:  the two oilseed plants belong to the same botanical family and require similar ecological conditions. Industrial processing is equally similar; and
•    Agricultural readiness and plasticity. Improved castor varieties are available and technical packages are ready for both manual and mechanized cropping including harvesting.

This pilot will particularly allow Eco-Carbone to assess castor profitability by comparing rain-fed with irrigation cropping conditions. It will also allow to tune up agricultural technical packages, evaluate progress margin in terms of both productivity and cost effectiveness, and test the logistic chain from the fields to industrial plants.

Future perspectives

Should the pilot be successful, Eco-Carbone would expand castor production and develop its synergy with Jatropha development. Such expansion would take place essentially in Brazil although small agricultural tests are also conducted in the other Eco-Carbone projects where castor production could eventually be developed should the results be positive.

Moreover Eco-Carbone envisages to get involved in industrial processing through service contract and/or co-investment to sell castor oil nationally and internationally as well as co-products.