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 Jatropha seeds, courtsey Gem Biofuels First published in Infocus: Jatropha, a supplement to Cleantech magazine, May 2008, Copyright Cleantech Investor 2008
GEM listed on AIM in October last year at a valuation of £13 million. The company, which operates in Madagascar, has secured close to 500,000 hectares for plantations and originally planned to plant 200,000 hectares of jatropha by the end of 2010. GEM has secured 50 year exclusive rights over 452,500 hectares to establish plantations – sizes range from 2,500 to 50,000 hectares – and rights over a further 40,000 hectares of natural forest which contains mature jatropha trees.
Using a projected yield of 2.7 tonnes of oil per hectare, GEM had originally stated that it expected to produce 45,000 tonnes of crude oil by 2009, rising to 210,000 tonnes by 2014. It was scheduled to have planted over 60,000 hectares by February this year. However, the company recently announced that, owing to the lack of available seed, it had planted just 30,000 hectares. Projections for 2009 have been reduced to 20,000 tonnes of crude oil. GEM claims a hectare of jatropha can produce 6.5 barrels of fuel.
GEM has signed a long term off-take agreement with Natural Fuel Limited (NFL) to supply crude jatropha oil for NFL’s Singapore biodiesel refinery over a ten year period. GEM expects that NFL (an Australian listed biodiesel refining company) will take 55% of its crude jatropha oil production in Madagascar. The agreement with NFL, which is for ten years from January 2009, sets the price at US$500 per tonne (delivery price, free on board), with adjustments for inflation. |
