The Hindu Business Line : US Exim Bank to provide loans for bio-diesel projects

Mumbai, Jan. 16 The US Export-Import Bank has agreed to lend to Kochi-based Upasco India, a small scale unit which plans to manufacture bio-diesel from municipal waste. The loan is meant to finance purchase of US equipment.

For each project with a capacity to process 150 tonnes of municipal waste, the US Export-Import Bank will provide $11.1 million (about Rs 44 crore). The overall project cost to set up a plant would be in the region of Rs 300 crore. Upasco is planning to set up bio-diesel plants in half-a-dozen cities in the initial phase.

The transactions will be eligible for the bank’s medium-term programme, with a repayment term of five years and the possibility of seven years, according to Mr V. Sasidharan, Managing Director of Upasco.

The company recently bagged a contract from the Bhivandi Municipal Corporation, which has allocated six acres of land for the project and is also close to signing a similar agreement with the Agra Municipal Corporation. “We will sign the agreement with the Agra Municipal Corporation by the end of this month and our pilot project will be in Agra,” Mr Sasidharan told Business Line. “Agra has agreed to allocate 15 acres of land where we will set up a plant with the capacity to process 150 tonnes of municipal waste. In two years time, we will upgrade the plant capacity to 800 tonnes,” he said.

The plants will be built on a build-operate-own-transfer basis The company hopes to recover its investment in 8-10 years.

According to Mr Sasidharan, apart from clean energy, zero waste is the promise of the depolymerisation plants. The residue after the depolymerisation process can be used for road construction or for making building blocks.

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