As the world shifts from traditional fuels towards the use of renewable and sustainable fuels like ethanol, TruAlt Bioenergy, engaged in producing the renewable fuel, is set to be Asia’s largest ethanol manufacturing company with a capacity of close to 2,000 kilo litres per day.
Speaking at ET Now Leaders of Tomorrow (LOT) Awards on Wednesday, Vijay Nirani, Founder & MD, TruAlt Bioenergy & MD, MRN Group said that they will be contributing close to 7 per cent of India’s total production from this ethanol supply. “Ethanol has been one of the biggest game changers for us. Now we have bioenergy parks and we are no more just a sugar mill,” the entreprenuer said in a fireside chat session on ‘Creating Sustainable Businesses For The Next Decade’.
Thanking the Times Network for bringing the rural most companies like the MRN Group to the fore to show the world that even the rural most economies can be created; they can be multi-fold increased, Nirani stressed that it can still be very alluring and appealing at the same time.
“TruAlt Bioenergy is also going to be one of the first companies in the country where privately held company is going to setup 2G ethanol. We are having strategic tie-ups with industry leaders who have already setup 2G ethanol plants overseas. We are tying up and setting up in north of Karnataka,” the company’s founder & MD stated.
Other than 2G ethanol, TruAlt Bioenergy is also doing Iso butanol, a liquid that comes out of molasses, which is a byproduct of sugarcane. It is one of the largest raw materials that goes into making sustainable aviation fuel, Nirani said while highlighting how a labour-oriented company can contribute to making the aviation sector more sustainable.
For Nirani, the definition of sustainability comes in when we try to capitalise on each and every product that we can derive from any product.
Speaking on his company’s shift from sugar to making ethanol, the young leader cited the government’s good policy updates as a major booster. “In the last few years in our country, there’s been a lot of good opportunities that we have had. We belong to an agro-based industry with sugarcane being the primary product. Earlier it was just about producing sugar and congeneration power.”
Now, with the policy benefits that the government has brought in and the world looking at green energy sustainable energy because of depleting crude, the most important sector to boost the area is ecological impact of how we increase value there, Nirani said.
“What we used to do was make sugar back in the day and today sugar industries have become bio parks. So, when we speak of sustainability, it is not just about ecology, it is about the whole ecosystem of what you are doing. It has to be sustainable; it has to have a lot of impacts going forward,” Nirani added further.
TruAlt Bioenergy is producing close to 16 products today ranging from ethanol, sugar, cogeneration power, there is hydrogen when hydrogen comes into effect. Then there is isobutanol. These are all sustainable energies that we are doing. There’s a lot of good policy benefit for us to be where we are today, Nirani highlighted.
