The Maharashtra State Cooperative Sugar factories Federation Ltd, in a letter to the food ministry, has urged the government to allow mills to produce and sell alcohol, rectified spirit, extra neutral alcohol and special denatured spirit from B-heavy molasses and sugarcane juice, said Sanjay Khatal, managing director of the federation.
Maharashtra is the country's second largest producer of sugar and molasses, after Uttar Pradesh.
Currently, the central government has allowed alcohol produced from B-heavy molasses to be used only for production of ethanol. Sugar mills can make and sell alcohol and spirit made by using C-heavy molasses.
"… (use of B-heavy molasses) shall help to completely stop production of C-heavy molasses whenever necessary for sugar mills both with distillation facilities and those without distillation facilities, and it's banning for ethanol production," Khatal said.
In order to increase the blending level of ethanol with petrol in the country, the government has allowed production of the biofuel from four different feedstock–sugarcane juice, sugar syrup, B-heavy molasses, C-heavy molasses, and damaged foodgrains unfit for human consumption and other sources.
According to the National Biofuels Policy, 2018, the government aims to achieve ethanol-petrol blending rate of 10% by 2022 and 20% by 2030.
The federation has also sought permission to sell B-heavy molasses, 100% sugarcane juice, and sugar syrup (including bio syrup) to other distilleries and standalone distilleries, Khatal said.
If the Centre allows mills to use B-heavy molasses for production of alcohol, the problem of separate storage for alternative routes particularly B- and C-heavy molasses would be resolved leading to capital cost savings and also reduce hassles of monitoring different sources of ethanol.
"It will also help in absolute and substantial reduction in sugar production… improve sugar prices thus aiding government to drop/stop different scheme such as buffer stock etc, and save budgetary resources for better programmes," the federation said in the letter.
The Centre has fixed different prices of ethanol depending on the feedstock used. The price of ethanol derived from C-heavy molasses is the lowest due to its low sugar content.