Español Ingles Portuques
Necesita el plugin de Flash para visualizar correctamente la página

2003

Enviar a... Imprimir

Abengoa Bioenergía exports Bioethanol to the European Union

September 1, 2003

On 18th June, Abengoa Bioenergía signed a contract to supply a total of 12 million litres of bioethanol to the Swedish company Svenska Shell. They are to be supplied by Ecocarburantes Españoles S.A., FOB in Cartagena in July and December this year. Each shipment will total 6 million litres.

This bioethanol will be 5% mixed (direct mixture, E5) in the petrol the Swedish oil company distributes from its Gothenburg and Lulea terminals, both in Sweden, a country in which this mixture is feasible and where Svenska Shall has been doing so since the year 2000. Svenska Shell has obtained prior authorisation in Sweden to apply the devaluation required to market the product. This was obtained from the Swedish government through the importing agent Talloil which was granted the devaluation at the beginning of the year.

The growth in demand in the country and the lack of local production facilities means that alternative bioethanol sources have to be found. Abengoa Bioenergía competitively offered the surplus bioethanol from Ecocarburantes Españoles S.A's plant in Cartagena and was awarded the supply contract. The objective is to establish a long-term link with their Swedish customer.

This is the first time we have exported dehydrated bioethanol for large-scale fuel use to community countries from our plants in Spain. Thanks to the improvements made to our plant production lines, Abengoa Bioenergía is now capable of producing surplus bioethanol which means it can offer a reliable and guaranteed supply of bioethanol to its customers in the community market, which will enable expansion of these markets long before its new plants come into operation.

Product exportation over the next 5 years to cover EU demand is a key to Abengoa Bioenergía's Business Plan for Europe, and is likewise an instrument of vital significance to the development of emerging markets in Europe by facilitating the creation of infrastructures and encouraging the use of bioethanol.

Abengoa Bioenergía currently operates two bioethanol plants in Spain, using grain, Ecocarburantes Españoles S.A. and Bioetanol Galicia S.A. Total installed production capacity is 142 and 168 million litres per year, respectively.

Moreover, it is constructing a third plant in Salamanca together with Ebro Puleva, called Biocarburantes de Castilla y León S.A. Annual production will be 200 million litres, of which 5 million litres will be produced by conversion of the grain biomass content through the use of a new technology that is being developed by Abengoa Bioenergía R&D.

As regards activities in the US, the company operates three bioethanol plants with a total annual production capacity of 325 million litres. This means the company is the second largest producer at world level and No. 1 in Europe.

Abengoa Bioenergía's Business Plan also includes the promotion and construction of two new bioethanol plants in Europe. Collaboration agreements and feasibility studies are currently being developed for this. The plants will finally be constructed in the markets where the rapid and assured expansion of bioethanol use is guaranteed by demand and the legislative framework, fostered by the recent approval of the European Directives on the Promotion and Taxation of Biofuels.

Bioenergy Business Unit implementation of a Lotus Notes Purchasing Application

General aspects: The Purchase Lotus Notes application is born of the Bioenergy Business Unit belief in the concept of centralization of purchases and the leverage of similar purchases throughout the entire organization. The main goal of this application is to channel the Purchase requests, Orders and associated Invoices in every single Bioenergy Company, in order to minimize the risks inherent to any purchase, by utilizing Noc's, Health & Safety and the Quality requirements as indispensable elements that must be contained in the specification of requirements for any single product and/or service to be bought and/or contracted.

Because the Bioenergy Business Unit has production plants all across the world, we want to have control over the purchasing conditions and invoices for each Bioenergy Company. The only way of obtaining this is by using an application where a global vision is shared. Telvent Outsourcing has developed this application in Lotus Notes which is our corporate purchasing tool.

This application allows us to have control over all type of purchases (provisioning, contracts of supply, management of general expenses, capital expenditures, operational expenditures and maintenance contracts). The application is a tidy computerized system that integrates into the structure of the Business Unit the definition of the requirements and conditions of purchase and allows, through a defined approval work flow, to execute the purchasing decision. This tool provides, with specific procedures and rules of approval for every type of purchase, visibility to the organization for the management of purchases and provisioning. The guidelines require that every person in charge of each area has a complete and exact knowledge of what is being bought, from whom, at how much, etc. There are different views within the database that provide infinite statistical information of great value for the management of purchasing within the Bioenergy Business Unit. To have all the information inside the application will facilitate tight management of the purchase process (from when it is bought until the goods are received and its later payment).

The application reflects a mandatory procedure for carrying out requests by requiring approval before confirmation for the orders that require a Noc approval.

It will also be compulsory to carry out the Noc authorisation request in those cases which payments conditions are different from PPB 180 days.

If the order pertains to a contract, it is not necessary to generate the Noc Authorization Request, as it will have already been generated and approved in previous stages. If there are existing approved Noc authorizations prior to creating an order, they must appear on the order for reference. In these cases, Noc Authorization Requests will not be permitted.

We have developed inside the application of purchases and in co-ordination with the Quality department, the Suppliers' evaluation, which have been defined for the following types of suppliers:

Strategic suppliers: with two conditions (approved and Alertness).

Not strategic Suppliers: with three conditions (approved, Not approved and in Alertness).

The qualification obtained for every supplier is transferred to the document Purchase Request and later to the Purchase Order to continually show the status of the supplier in order for us to determine, depending on its condition, the necessary measures to guarantee the quality of the product and of the service, very important point to guarantee the efficiency of our plants.

Evolution of this tool: Going a step further there will be a link to the Purchasing Application of a Management Contract tool, which will manage deliveries and right to pay suppliers on maintenance and provisioning contracts. So our next step is to integrate this tool with the rest of the Information System existing in our Business Unit. We have done, as we have commented, the interface between the purchase application and our accounting system. In Abengoa Bioenergy Corporation we are using Agris for managing our contracts of grain. Agris also has the capability to manage inventories and overcoat has the possibility to manage all kind of contracts of provisioning. Additionally, we are working on the interface between Rossmiman (maintenance application) and the Purchasing Application. The interface between Agris, Rossmiman and the Purchasing Application will allow us to close the purchase cycle.

For the near future, our next step should be to close the loop with our suppliers through Internet access. In that case the proposals, remarks to the provisioning, invoices, etc would be channeled through our applications. All that means that we are defining and configuring our Information System.

Search
© 2008 Abengoa Bioenergy, S.A. All rights reserved