The government allows sugar cane juice and B-molasses to be made into ethanol in 2023-2024

The government on Friday allowed sugar mills to use both sugarcane juice and B-heavy molasses to produce ethanol but limited the quantity of sugar for this purpose to 17 lakh tonnes for the current supply year 2023-2024.

The latest decision comes a week after the government banned the use of sugarcane juice and sugar syrup for making ethanol, with the industry seeking to reverse the decision.

“Flexibility has been given to sugar mills to use both cane juice and B-heavy within a total ceiling of 17 lakh tonnes of sugar for making ethanol in the current supply year 2023-24 (November-October),” the Food Minister said. Sanjeev Chopra told PTI.

A committee of ministers took the decision at its meeting on Friday, he said.

The decision was taken following protests from the industry seeking an immediate review of the December 7 decision that banned the use of sugarcane juice and sugar syrup.

However, it had allowed supply of ethanol from existing offers of oil marketing companies (OMCs) for B-heavy molasses.

“We are working on modalities to decide the proportion of sugarcane juice and B-heavy molasses to be used for making ethanol,” Chopra said.

A certain amount of ethanol has already been produced using sugarcane juice in the current delivery year, he added.

Another Food Ministry official said around 6 lakh tonnes of ethanol has already been produced using sugarcane juice before the government issued the December 7 order.

The government estimates that sugar production will fall to 32.3-33 million tonnes in the 2023-2024 season (October-September), down from 37.3 million tonnes in the previous season.

“We expected sugarcane production to be low but did not expect it to decline further. The recent rains have further reduced the recovery rate. The drought in Maharashtra and Karnataka is worrying,” Chopra said recently.

First print: December 15, 2023 | 10:19 PM IST