Local firm processes bio-diesel from sunflower

19/08/09

Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru & Jasmine Arku

A local company, Tragrimacs Sunflower Ghana Limited, has set up a plant at Tema that processes 5,000 gallons of bio-diesel a day from sunflower.
The oil expeller processes sunflower seeds into crude oil while the bio-diesel processor refines the crude oil into bio-diesel, suitable for vehicles.
The bio-diesel produced from the sunflower is offered for sale, mainly to owners of tractors for farming and other purposes.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) supported the project with $25,000 under its Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme (GEF-SGP).
The Chief Executive Officer of Tragrimacs, Mr Issah Suleiman, made this known to the Daily Graphic after an inspection tour of a 40-acre sunflower plantation at Gomoa Adzentem in the Central Region.
The plantation has a portion for beekeeping for the production of honey.
According to Mr Suleiman, bio-diesel produced from sunflower had several advantages over other bio-diesel products.
For instance, he said bio-diesel from sunflower emit less carbon, thus making it environmentally friendly.
He said the decision to set up the plant to process sunflower into bio-diesel was necessitated by the huge demand and the increasing cost of fuel in the country.
Mr Suleiman appealed to the government to adopt the bio-diesel produced from sunflower as an alternative source of energy in the country.
He asked the government to work towards achieving five per cent production of bio-diesel from sunflower by 2015, and indicated that it would bring down the cost of fuel by 10 per cent.
The National Programme Co-ordinator of the UNDP GEF-SGP, Mr George B. Ortsin, said his outfit had provided funds to three categories of farmers to go into sunflower cultivation, processing and marketing.
The Chief of Gomoa Adzentem, Nana Asare I, who provided the land for the cultivation of sunflower, promised to offer more land to farmers to go into sunflower cultivation in the area.