Oil marketing companies (OMCs) have notified sugar mills for the supply of 366 crore litres of ethanol following two cycles of Expressions of Interest (EoI) for the current ethanol supply year that began on December 1.
The Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA) said in a press release that in the 2020-21 ethanol supply year, distilleries supplied 302.3 crore litres, achieving an average blending of 8.1%.
For 2021-22, the government has set a target of 10% blending, and the total requirement for this year was 459 crore litres of ethanol, ISMA said.
The association said that as on December 15, 479 sugar mills were crushing cane for the 2021-22 (October to September) sugar season, producing 77.91 lakh tonnes of sugar. This was 4.57 lakh tonnes higher than that in the corresponding date of the previous sugar season.
More than 6.5 lakh tonnes of sugar were exported by the end of November in the current sugar season compared with about 3 lakh tonnes in the corresponding period of last year, the association said.