LT Group unit to set up sugar mill, power plant

In Batangas

LIAN, Batangas – The renewable energy (RE) investment of LT Group, Inc., through its subsidiary Absolut Distillers, Inc. (ADI), is poised to amount to more than a billion peso as the company mulls over the plan to set up a sugar mill and cogeneration plant in Batangas.

On Tuesday, ADI kicked off the third installment of its multi-million investment project on RE with the establishment of a new bioethanol facility in Lian, Batangas.

Gerardo Tee, ADI chief operating officer, said the company is planning to build a sugar mill and a cogeneration plant to complement the operations of the recently opened bioethanol plant.

During the opening of the plant, Tee said ADI is looking at additional combined investment of 500 million to 700 million for the development of the new facilities.

Tee, who also serves as the LT Group’s Distillery Operations, said the company will try to get the funding for the development of sugar mill and cogeneration plant this year.

“If we get funding this year, then we will complete 2017,” Tee told reporters.

This is on top of the bioethanol plant; the company’s solar plant that started operations in March; and the biogas plant that the company opened in the 90s. All of these facilities are located in the same complex in Lian.

Nestor Mendonez, senior vice president and chief finance officer of LT Group Inc., said in a separate interview with reporters that the LT Group invested more than a hundred million for the bioethanol plant, while it needed as much as 189 million to put up the solar plant. Back in the 90s, the company invested around 70 million for the biogas plant.

Once the company officially pursued its plan to put up the sugar mill and cogeneration plant, the combined worth of its investment in RE would already stand at around 800 million to more than 1 billion.

Aside from this, the company is also planning to upgrade the capacity of its two-megawatt solar facility.

Meanwhile, the company’s recently opened bioethanol facility’s production volume is estimated at three million liters per month and 100,000 liters per day.

Two of the country’s major oil companies Sea Oil and Flying V are the early major off-takers of ADI’s bioethanol produce.