Uniduto seeks partner for alcohol duct
Valor Econômico
Uniduto has contracted the Itaú BBA bank in order to advise it in seeking national and foreign investors to raise resources to execute the alcohol duct project of the company. Created in March/2008, the company has 88 sugar and alcohol plants as partners, and they are responsible for one third of the production of alcohol in Brazil. The project of an alcohol duct for the plants is fully structured in the State of São Paulo, with ethanol collecting and storing bases that will be interconnected until Guarujá, for the flowing of the product to the foreign market. The total extension will be 560 kilometers. The investments are estimated at nearly US$ 1 billion.
According to Sergio Van Klaveren, President of Uniduto, the shareholding plants have already disbursed nearly US$ 30 million to start the project, which will start its operations in the 2011/12 harvest. "These resources are being invested in acquisitions of areas for the construction of the alcohol collection and storage bases, besides the port, amounting to 1 million square meters", he affirmed. The tank capacity of the bases will be of nearly 800 million liters. The company also has its entire staff, with 20 employees, already assembled. The entrance of new partners was foreseen since the beginning. "In the first stage, only the companies of the sector had become shareholding [the main ones are Cosan, Copersucar, Allicom and Crystalsev]. In the second stage, which will be commanded by Itaú BBA, we will have other investors ", said Klaveren.
At this moment, Uniduto concentrates its efforts in the acquisition of the areas where the collecting bases will be installed, in the centers of distribution and port, all of them in São Paulo. The alcohol collection bases will be in Botucatu, Anhembi and Serrana. The city of Santa Bárbara D'Oeste will have a storing and collecting base. According to Klaveren, there will have a secondary base of Uniduto in Paulínia in order to supply the ducts that will take the alcohol to the fuel distributors. The company will also have a distribution base in Cajamar to supply the metropolitan region of São Paulo. Finally, Uniduto is structuring an "offshore" (external) terminal in Guarujá, with two monobuoys to receive ships of both small and great drafts.
The project of Uniduto foresees the alcohol duct should go through nearly 50 cities of the State of São Paulo. "Our calculations indicate that nearly 1,600 double trucks will stop circulating through the highways a day because of the alcohol duct." According to the executive, the alcohol produced in the States of Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás and Minas Gerais, for example, will arrive through highways, railroads or through the Tietê-Paraná waterway until the Uniduto collection bases in the State of São Paulo to follow through the alcohol duct.