Raizen Energia, a Brazilian joint venture between Shell and local conglomerate Cosan, has started supplying sugar cane-derived pellets to German utility RWE's .
The company exported 50,000t of pellets to the Netherlands, for testing at RWE's 600MW Amer plant. The pellets were produced by the sugar and ethanol group's Jau pellet plant in Sao Paulo state.
Raizen is in supply negotiations with other European power generators, it said. Raizen did not specify the duration or price of its supply agreement with RWE.
The company's new pellet business aims to monetize as much of its ethanol and sugar production business as possible by using surplus bagasse leftover from the cane-crushing process as feedstock to make the pellets.
The Jau plant is located close to a cluster of Raizen cane mills in central Sao Paulo state and has the capacity to produce 100,000 t/yr of pellets.
Raizen purchased an 81.5pc stake in Cosan Biomassa in 2019. The remaining stake is owned by Japan's Sumitomo.
Raizen is the first Brazilian company to export cane pellets, though Brazil's wood pellet export industry has grown steadily in recent years.
Brazil exported 247,000t of wood pellets in January-September 2020, up by 46pc from the same period of 2019, according to the trade secretariat's import-export database Comexstat. Over half of those exports or 142,000t came from Brazil's southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, where Brazilian forestry firm Tanac operates a 400,000 t/yr wood pellet plant. Tanac has a long-term contract to supply wood pellets to UK power generator Drax.
