which went public last year and made its first acquisition in May said around 40 plants are being offered for sale."In the final stage of the (acquisition) process we identified at least eight good targets," he said adding that current prices for sugar and ethanol have drawn sellers and buyers to the market.Sugar prices are trading near a five-year peak while ethanol prices in Brazil are near all-time highs.Penna said Jalles is not looking for another mill for now but said one of the plants they looked into controlled by banker Andre Esteves and by the Grendene group is being offered in the market by BTG Pactual.Asked about the mandate BTG Pactual declined to comment.The last two years have improved companies' financial situation after years of underperforming head of commercial banking for Citi in Brazil."EBITDA numbers rose a lot and they managed to cut debt The companies are in a better shape now," he said.Overall there is spare cane crushing capacity in Brazil because lower sugar and ethanol prices in the previous decade reduced the sugarcane area as farmers switched to more profitable crops such as soybeans and corn.Brazil center-south mills have capacity to crush around 840 million tonnes of sugarcane per year but this year's crop is projected at only around 540 million tonnes.The mill Jalles Machado bought has a crushing capacity of 2.7 million tonnes but is currently only crushing 2 million tonnes Penna said.There is room now for the sugarcane crop to grow in coming years due to hot demand for ethanol agribusiness director for investment bank Itau BBA He believes the crop migration from cane to grains has ended."Current prices make sugarcane very profitable both for farmers and for processors," he said projecting that Brazil's sugarcane planted area could grow in 2023 2024 and 2025.Reporting by Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by David Gregorio Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Covers agricultural commodities and biofuels, including production, trade and transportation, based in New York. Former Brazil correspondent and climate/environment reporter. Brazilian, holds a Bachelor of Journalism degree and has done post-graduate studies in Environmental Reporting from Germany's InWent Institute and Foreign Policy and International Political Economy from Harvard University. Avid soccer and tennis player. , opens new tab Browse an unrivalled portfolio of real-time and historical market data and insights from worldwide sources and experts. , opens new tabScreen for heightened risk individual and entities globally to help uncover hidden risks in business relationships and human networks. © 2025 Reuters. All rights reserved This assessment was presented by participants at a meeting at FAPESP on the 40th anniversary of Proálcool the National Fuel Alcohol Program (photo: São Martinho mill in Pradópolis By Elton Alisson  |  Agência FAPESP – Proálcool the National Fuel Alcohol Program created by government decree in November 1975 has bolstered the production of bioenergy in Brazil during the last four decades and is one of the greatest genuinely Brazilian science- and technology-based achievements as a result of close collaboration between universities universities and industry: 40 years of science and technology for Brazilian ethanol” (http://www.fapesp.br/eventos/proalcool) The purpose of the event was to discuss Proálcool’s history and background from the colonial sugarcane era to the use of ethanol as automotive fuel in the twentieth century and to assess the present state of play and future opportunities for bioenergy derived from sugarcane The book Proálcool 40 Anos, a collection of articles edited by Luís Augusto Barbosa Cortez, was launched during the event. Cortez is a professor at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in São Paulo State and a member of the steering committee of FAPESP’s Bioenergy Research Program (BIOEN) the articles in the book are by Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz FAPESP’s Scientific Director; Gláucia Mendes Souza a professor at the University of São Paulo’s Chemistry Institute (IQ-USP); Heitor Cantarella a researcher at the Agronomy Institute of Campinas (IAC); Marie-Anne van Sluys a professor at the University of São Paulo’s Biosciences Institute (IB-USP); and Rubens Maciel Filho All are also members of BIOEN’s steering committee there’s a tendency not to recognize major technological and scientific achievements when their authors are Brazilians But perhaps Brazil’s greatest science- and technology-based achievement has been to enable the automotive vehicle fleet of an industrialized economy to be powered by ethanol,” Brito Cruz said in his presentation at the event For the participants in the event and the authors of the book Proálcool’s success was due not only to the choice of an efficient energy crop such as sugarcane and the climate and soil of Brazil’s Center-West government and researchers who were prepared to wager on the technological feasibility of fuel ethanol produced from sugarcane “Proálcool’s launch was met by a barrage of criticism and worldwide skepticism regarding Brazil’s decision to produce a fuel as an alternative to petroleum,” Cortez said industry or the research community paid much attention to what the world thought It’s very unlikely that Brazil would have achieved self-sufficiency in oil without Proálcool’s contribution.” The main reason for the creation of Proálcool was precisely to reduce Brazil’s dependency on petroleum especially following the 1973 oil shock: between October 1973 and January 1974 it became clear that in addition to its economic advantages ethanol from sugarcane offered the key environmental advantage of emitting less carbon into the atmosphere than gasoline and other fossil fuels sugarcane had a highly positive energy balance indicating a large difference between the energy consumed to produce sugarcane in terms of fertilizer truck transportation and other resources and the energy produced from sugarcane A 1977 article in Science by José Goldemberg and collaborators was the first contribution along these lines Goldemberg is a professor at the University of São Paulo’s Energy & Environment Institute (IEA-USP) and FAPESP’s President The authors calculated how much energy was used to produce ethanol from sugarcane cassava and sweet sorghum in Brazil and showed that sugarcane was the most efficient The main advantage of using sugarcane was its bagasse “The paper was important not for the accuracy of the numbers it presented which were very primitive and were later improved on but because it gave the industry more confidence by demonstrating the importance of sugarcane as a means of capturing the sun’s energy and showing that ethanol is liquefied solar energy,” Goldemberg said during the event the academic community was not in the slightest interested in either ethanol or sugar from sugarcane.” Thanks to its investment in the production of ethanol from sugarcane starting with Proálcool Brazil is now the leading country among the world’s ten largest economies in terms of renewable energy sources as a share of the overall energy mix Bioenergy from sugarcane alone accounts for 18.1% of the total according to data from the Ministry of Mining & Energy highlighted in the book and by participants in the event Brazil is the world’s leading sugarcane producer and its ethanol output in the 2015-16 crop year reached 28 billion liters Brazil produced 555 million liters of ethanol the 174 sugar and ethanol mills in the Center-South will produce 82 metric tons of sugarcane per hectare according to data from the Sugarcane Technology Center (CTC) that were presented by Goldemberg “It’s important that mills strive for higher agricultural yields,” he said About 60% of the ethanol produced from sugarcane in Brazil is produced in São Paulo State whose energy matrix is strongly based on this biofuel 62% of all the energy used in São Paulo State came from petroleum petroleum’s share of the state’s energy mix fell to 38% whose share increased from 14% in 1980 to 32% in 2013 “Bioenergy is very important to São Paulo not only economically but also because it helps the state reduce carbon emissions,” Brito Cruz said One factor that has contributed to this strong growth of ethanol as a share of the energy matrix in recent decades is support for bioenergy research in the state FAPESP has always supported many research projects in the field of bioenergy it decided to extend its funding for such research and to do so in a more coordinated manner This included funding for a project led by Cortez with the aim of establishing guidelines for scientific and technological research on bioenergy in São Paulo State The results of the project served as input for the 2008 launch of BIOEN which now has more than 300 researchers affiliated with universities and research institutions in Brazil and abroad engaged in research projects on different aspects of bioenergy and environmental and socio-economic sustainability “The main difference between BIOEN and similar bioenergy research programs around the world is that BIOEN basically covers all knowledge areas relating to bioenergy,” Gláucia Souza said The program has established partnerships with seven companies to identify possible applications for some of the results of the projects supported They include Peugeot Citroën – with which FAPESP agreed to set up an engineering research center for the development of combustion engines powered by biofuels in 2013 – and Dedini a manufacturer of industrial equipment based in Piracicaba FAPESP and Dedini partnered to fund projects that contributed to the advancement of knowledge and technology in the field of industrial processes for the production of ethanol from sugarcane “We played a very significant role in the implementation and development of Proálcool by helping to establish hundreds of standalone distilleries –currently known as ethanol plants – with totally Brazilian technology in the initial stage of the program,” said José Luiz Olivério Researchers linked to BIOEN have published more than 930 scientific articles in the last seven years has contributed to São Paulo State’s current position as the region of the world with the largest number of scientific publications on sugarcane behind Brazil overall but ahead of the US “São Paulo is becoming a focus for bioenergy research worldwide The book Proálcool 40 Anos (doi:10.5151/9788521210627), by Cortez et al., is available free of charge (in Portuguese) from openaccess.blucher.com.br/article-list/proalcool-universidades-e-empresas-40-anos-de-ciencia-e-tecnologia-para-o-etanol-brasileiro-310/list#articles The book Proálcool 40 Anos (doi:10.5151/9788521210627), by Cortez et al., is available free of charge (in Portuguese) from openaccess.blucher.com.br/article-list/proalcool-universidades-e-empresas-40-anos-de-ciencia-e-tecnologia-para-o-etanol-brasileiro-310/list#articles.