Brazil/Oranjestad -- Private equity firm Carlyle Group [CYL.UL] and a group of investors agreed last week to invest $240 million in a Brazilian ethanol and sugar producer, betting on growing demand for biofuels.
The group, led by Carlyle and private equity firm Riverstone Holdings LLC, will put the funds into Companhia Nacional de Acucar e Alcool (CNAA), a joint venture between sugar and ethanol producer Santa Elisa and Global Foods holding.
Global Foods said in a statement that the Carlyle /Riverstone Renewable Energy Infrastructure Fund pledged $187 million of the total funding. Funding was coordinated by the Dutch ING Bank CNAA plans to build at least four sugar and ethanol mills in Minas Gerais and Goias states in Brazil's center-south, Brazil's main sugar-cane producing region.
Total cane crushing capacity will be 20 million tons a year from 120,000 hectares of plantations.
"It is CNAA's intention to take Santa Elisa's strength as an industry pioneer for the past 70 years to the newer cane-growing areas of Brazil where efficiency gains are still a achievable with the use of state-of-the-art technology and from selecting ideal agricultural lay-outs," Allan Kahane, a co-founder of Global Foods, said in the statement.
Kahane also explained that CNAA would be supported by Crystalsev, one of Brazil's biggest sugar and ethanol distributors in which Santa Elisa is the main shareholder.
Santa Elisa, controlled by the Biaggi family, owns three mills and was the first to produce fuel ethanol in Brazil in 1975.
Global Foods specializes in global preferential trade access for sugar and ethanol. It is a company incorporated and existing under the laws of the Netherlands Antilles, with registered office at Landhuis Joonchi, Kaya Richard J. Beaujon, z/n Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles.
The company was founded ten years ago by Rene Kan from Aruba and Justus Martens, from Curacao, former commodity financiers with Mees Pierson and ING Bank, and Allan Kahane, a Brazilian national with extensive experience as an international private investor and active shareholder in industrial companies in the U.S. and Brazil.
The Carlyle Group manages $54 billion and Riverstone, a New York-based $8.1 billion, including $800 million in its renewable energy infrastructure fund. For more information kindly refer to: http://www.globalfoodsholding.com
Global Foods Holding had recently agreed, that following successful negotiations with the Aruba Free Zone and the Aruba Port Authority it will start establishing an ethanol dehydration plant in the port of Barcadera, here.
If all goes well, the mills in Brazil, operational at the end of 2008, and capable of shipping their product to Aruba by bulk carriers, will supply that new local plant. When the ethanol arrives here, it will be finished and prepared to enter consumer markets all over the world.
It will be considered a Caribbean Basin Initiative project designed to support and boost the economy of developing countries, finally allowing Aruba to participate more fully in the benefits of the global economy.
