News

Silversands Ethanol became the 1^st farming group in South Africa to commercially grow Sugar Beet for the Bio Ethanol industry.- 05/04/2009

Silversands Ethanol has planted the 1^st commercial Sugar Beet crop in South Africa destined to be used for the manufacture of Bio Ethanol. The crop was planted in April 2009 and will be harvested in September 2009.

Sugar Beet is extremely well suited to the manufacture of Bio Ethanol. It produces 550 MT of Beet per 5 hectares which results in 110 liters of Ethanol per MT.

This means it is far more efficient than maize as an ethanol manufacturing feedstock. Sugar beet produces 11,000 liters of Ethanol per hector of land as opposed to maize’s 1,600 liters. This is staggering when one considers that there are also two crops per year of Sugar Beet while maize has only one. Sugar Beet is also a very hardy plant requiring 550 mm of rain per year marginally above maize’s 500 mm when one considers the resultant delivery of Ethanol.