KTIS Confident for Strong Biomass Fuel Biz while Boosting Profits
Kaset Thai International Sugar Corporation Public Company Limited (KTIS) has lately announced its successful sale of electricity and ethanol as the business on electricity from biomass fuel and profits from ethanol sale reached up to 77% and 3.9% respectively, equivalent to the soaring total income of 2,388.2 million Thai Baht in the first trimester of this year. For the sake of utmost effectiveness, the company is also planning to intensively adjust management strategies on production capital costs and raw materials in each of business lines as cane and sugar industries are facing severe drought, resulting in decreasing number of cane products.
The Deputy Chief Executive Officer of KTIS Mr. Nathapun Siriviriyakul said that, in the first trimester of 2020 according to the company’s financial statement during October until December, 2019, KTIS and its subsidiaries had seen a total of over two billion Thai Baht. The major income came from biomass-fuel based electricity generation and sale, yielding 143.6 million Thai Baht, an increase of 77% if compared to the number of the previous year, thanks to an increasing number of average sale of electricity.
Besides, production and sale of ethanol is another bio business which seems to grow constantly. The first trimester of this year saw an income as high as 375.7 million Baht, an increase of 3.9% if compared to the number of the previous year according to more sale despite the drop of average selling prices. Because the cane and sugar industries this year are being affected by decreasing number of harvested cane due to severe drought, KTIS then focuses mainly on management of production costs and raw materials in each of its business lines.
“Increasing prices of sugar in the world market are certainly advantageous to sugar production and sale businesses, but the amount of sugar produced is low. In this year, management on capital costs and selling prices needs to be in active. KTIS’ sugar business lines will be compensated in terms of cane costs and sugar production and sale from the cane and sugar funds apart from financial assistance to alleviate problems faced by cane farmers and some sugar refineries in the country,” added Mr. Nathapun.
Regarding the progress of the NBC project in Nakhon Sawan done by GGC KTIS Bioindustrial Co. Ltd. (GKBI), a subsidiary under KTIS and Global Green Chemical Public Co. Ltd., construction of a new cane extraction factory with production capacity of 24,000 tons daily is continuing along with a new ethanol factory with production capacity of 600,000 liters per day and an electricity and steam power generating plant with production capacities of 85 megawatts and 475 tons per hour respectively. All of them will be operated in accordance with the plan at the end of this year.