Dedini Developing Machinery to Convert Sweet Sorghum to Ethanol

Bloomberg
By Stephan Nielsen - May 6, 2011 5:00 AM CT

Dedini SA Industrias de Base, a Brazilian maker of ethanol-production machinery, is developing systems that will process sweet sorghum into renewable fuel, as an alternative to the widely used used sugar cane.

The company is in talks with eight developers about buying a sorghum-processing mill it plans to build by 2013. It also expects to sign by April a contract to add equipment to handle the alternative feedstock at an existing cane mill, Jose Luiz Oliverio, vice president of technology and development at Piracicaba-based Dedini, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Sorghum can be harvested in the first three months of the year, the rainy season when sugar-cane harvesting typically shuts down, ethanol supplies wane and prices surge.

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