India wants sugar mills to produce bioplastics or biochemicals while trying to sort out soft loan restructuring

In India, the transportation minister said the country’s financial institutions are not equipped to structure the more than $880 million in soft loans held by the sugarcane industry, financing that would help many integrate or boost ethanol production. As policy shifts are needed to allow mills to produce ethanol from grade B molasses, he instead suggested producing bioplastics or biochemicals instead to help boost revenues. Mills have offered only about half of the mills who participated in last year’s ethanol tenders have participated in the 2016/17 supply tenders, so the former agriculture minister will meet with the Prime Minister to see what can be done to boost supplies.