FS is today the largest corn ethanol producer in Brazil and wants to go beyond: becoming a company with a negative carbon seal. In an interview with the program Business root, its road between the countryside and Faria Lima, a partnership between Infoomoney and The AgribizCEO Rafael Abud explained that this ambition is directly linked to the capture of CO² of the industrial process – with less carbon footprint compared to other fuels.
They have a project that aims to make the brand go from 20 grams of CO² by megajoule equivalent to -10g, a 30g reduction in total. “With this, as our fuel was used, you would be actively removing carbon from the atmosphere,” he explains.
In addition, they also bet on a strategy that goes through a productive model that fully takes advantage of processed corn. Ethanol follows as a business star, of course. However, from the same operation, underproducts, such as DDG (nutritional corn bran), used for example, such as animal feed.
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Cheaper in production – and present in the daily tank
Corn ethanol has a market share of about 25% currently in Brazil. And it is considerably cheaper to produce, according to Abud. “Up to 40%, when compared to sugarcane,” he said. Amid this, he adds that even if many people do not know, the product is already present in many fuel tanks around Brazil.
These reduced costs, he explains, have a lot to do with the flexibility of the raw material, being a “lighter” industry, with a more efficient operating regime, especially in relation to thermal, electric loads, among other factors, resulting in a higher productivity operation.
On the other hand, for him, the cane, the main competitor and still holding the largest market share, has not had so much economic incentive to expand productive capacity. Therefore, it has been focusing more and more in the sugar sector. “In the end, I think it has an important complementarity between the two sectors.”
