SMC eyes sorghum ethanol project.
Food conglomerate San Miguel Corp. (SMC) is interested in joining the Sweet Sorghum for Ethanol Consortium (SSEC) as it has declared its extensive diversification efforts even into the energy business. Already five private enterprises are forming the Philippines SSEC after signing a memorandum of agreement (MoA) with...

Liquor firm to expand; exports eyed.
Byline: JAMES A. LOYOLA Brandy producer Emperador Distillers Inc., a subsidiary of Alliance Global Group Inc. is focusing on expanding its market overseas, particularly China and Thailand, backed by its increased capacity courtesy of an P8-billion two-year expansion program. AGI president Kingson Sian said the...

Supermarkets and service stations now competing for grain.
Cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in world grain consumption this year. The US Department of Agriculture projects that world grain use will grow by 20 million tons in 2006. Of this, 14 million tons will be used to produce fuel for cars in the United...

Brazilian government offers assistance in ethanol production.
Byline: MELODY M. AGUIBA The Brazilian government has offered to extend oil-wanting countries including the Philippines an assistance for an investment partnership in ethanol production in Brazil or a technical assistance in production of the renewable oil resource. Brazil, which started striving to achieve energy...

Competing with ballads (and whisky?): the construction, celebration, and commercialization of North-East Scottish identity.
This article looks at the ways in which songs, alcohol, and local identity are firmly wedded in the bothy ballad tradition of North-East Scotland. Although composed mainly between 1840 and 1890, the songs have continued to be sung long after the system of agriculture in which they were created...

Koreans, Aussies eye ethanol plant.
Byline: MELODY M. AGUIBA Koreans and Australians are tying up with local businesses to put up a sweet sorghum ethanol plant in Northern Luzon worth $ 20 million to $ 40 million even as this feedstock is stirring up interest in the US, Africa, and Latin America....

Mango Tee golf winds up today.
THE ALABANG Country Club wraps up the 22nd edition of the Mango Tee Invitational golf tournament today with a lot of teams closely fighting it out for top honors in various divisions. Two teams, Antonio Panajon-Lorenzo Martinez and Rey Carpio-Doods Antipuesto, shared the overall lead at 151...

Cuba's Sugar Ministry looks to ethanol as home-grown fix for island fuel needs.
Lots has been written about Cuba receiving Venezuelan crude oil at preferential prices, and about Cuba encouraging foreign giants to explore for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Less is known about the island's efforts to produce home-grown, sugar-based ethanol as a viable alternative to pricer crude...

RP can adopt technology from world's 1st comm'l sweet sorghum-based ethanol.
Byline: MELODY M. AGUIBA DELHI, India -- The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has commissioned the world's first commercial sweet sorghum-fed ethanol which the Philippines can adopt as a long-term solution to depleting supply of fossil fuel. The ethanol plant has...

Mango Tee; Recto-Avena pair poised for double.
CHITO RECTO and Abe Avena bucked the difficult conditions to seize the lead in both the low net and low gross divisions after the first three days of competition in the 21st Mango Tee member-guest tournament presented by Smart Infinity and Shell Velocity at the Alabang Country Club course....