Jamaica Broilers on Wednesday decided to proceed with the expansion of its ethanol business, and will pump US$15 million (J$1.1 billion) of new capital into expanding the plant at Port Esquivel.

The project will double capacity from 60 million gallons of wet ethanol to 120 million gallons of fuel grade ethanol, Broilers said in a stock market filing Thursday.

The company had said the project was under consideration after snagging $6 billion of ethanol sales in 10 months on a better than expected 45 million gallons shipped to the United States.

The plant was built for under $1 billion and commissioned last July.

Poultry dominant

Broilers' poultry business remains its dominant operation, but its $8 billion of sales last year to May 3, 2008, maintained only a slight edge over ethanol, whose revenues, when annualised came in at $7.2 billion.

Broilers says the additional capacity would be commissioned by December.

The project will also give the JB Ethanol Limited plant an additional 10 million gallons of storage capacity, for total storage of 24 million gallons.

business@gleanerjm.com