Until the end of 2014 there will be the largest biogas plant in Europe. This was stated by Yuriy Bondarchuk, CEO of JSC SILGOSP-PRODUKT agricultural holding.
Multicorporate enterprise SILGOSP-PRODUKT is the largest Ukrainian agro-industrial group which comprises agricultural and trade enterprises in such industries as livestock farming, grain storage and crop production, poultry farms, flour, sugar and animal formulated feed plants and many other. In general SILGOSP-PRODUKT involves 25 various enterprises. Experts from pelleta.com.ua, the Ukrainian web portal dedicated to the biofuel industry, report that the total turnover of SILGOSP-PRODUKT in 2013 amounts to UAH 1 billion. Now the agricultural holding operates about 40 thousand hectares of the lands in the area of Kyiv and Vinnytsia regions and still continues to grow and expand new business areas.
The biogas plant project got to be one of such new areas of interest. The total project value is estimated at €50 million.
While 75-80 % of the raised funds for the plant construction are to be allocated by investors and credit institutions, 20-25 % of the total costs are to be provided by the agricultural holding itself. At the moment all pre-construction activities, as the area geologic exploration, are completed, required local authorities’ permissions have been obtained as well. The preparations of the project documentation and the search for investors are under way.
Since the European grants for the "green tariff" may be issued only to plants with up to 1 MW capacity, SILGOSP-PRODUKT biogas station will be the first plant in Europe with the capacity of 2.5 MW. Given that under the Ukrainian legislation biogas can be produced only from plant-origin waste, it is expected that the new plant will operates on the corn silage. However, it is possible that in the future it may operate on some other sorts of the biomass.
Author: Ivan Prokhorov
