While tentatively welcoming the Boeing and CSIRO ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuel – State of Play” update, the Australian Sugar Milling Council (ASMC) is calling on governments to urgently develop a National Biofuels Feedstock Strategy, as highlighted in the report released recently, according to the press release.
“The ASMC has been calling for this feedstock strategy since early 2024. Sugar manufacturers can be central to Australia’s biofuels future through the production of bioethanol and other biofuels feedstocks. However, we need a good healthy dose of reality in the debate – the current proposed alcohol-to-fuel SAF plants will not use a single scrap of Australian feedstock, they will rely on imported bioethanol from places like Brazil,” said Mr Ash Salardini, CEO of the ASMC.
The sugar manufacturing sector can process sugarcane into products such as bioethanol that will be the feedstock for many of the SAF plants being proposed in Australia. Additionally, the by-product of this process, bagasse, could also be converted into biofuels providing up to 8% of the domestic aviation fuel
market.
“Our sector hasn’t been provided offtake agreements or any incentives to switch into supply chains for biofuels, so why would we spend the billions of dollars to convert our mills and processes to feed into biofuels, a risky and underdeveloped market?”
“Without the use of domestically produced feedstock, and in Queensland sugar has been identified as the main feedstock, the thousands of Queensland jobs supposedly being created by this nascent industry will simply not eventuate. If this industry consists of biorefineries for imported bioethanol, we will struggle to create a couple of hundred jobs.”
The ASMC has called for the establishment of a National Biofuels Feedstock Strategy with a steering group of potential leading feedstock providers providing guidance on feedstock availability and required next steps to establish a domestic supply chain.
“We look forward to the Federal and Queensland Governments really stepping up around a feedstock strategy, as we know they also want to see the economic uplift from a truly Australian biofuels industry.”
