‘Breakthrough’ Harvesting Solution, Growing Market, Potential beyond Biodiesel – All Good Signs for Castor Oil’s Future

by Helena Tavares Kennedy (Biofuels Digest) A ‘breakthrough’ mechanical harvesting solution for castor bean plants was developed by Evogene and agricultural equipment manufacturer, Fantini s.r.l., resulting in the removal of a major bottleneck in the conversion of castor beans into a fully modernized commercial crop. With field trial yield losses decreasing significantly (we are talkin’ up to 50% decrease) as a result of this new mechanical harvesting solution, we ask is castor oil becoming too good to flush down the toilet?

It also has caught the eye of biofuel producers looking for efficient feedstocks for biodiesel. In fact, Evogene was working on biodiesel made from castor oil until recently when it announced that the stand-alone company that was working on it, Evofuel, is currently in a rebranding and renaming process to better reflect its new strategy…i.e. switching from the biofuel market to the industrial castor oil market.

“Evofuel has realigned its strategy in light of changes in the biofuel industry and initiated a change in its targeted market from the biofuel industry to the castor oil market for industrial uses and a change in business model – from generating revenues from seed sales, to mainly focus on partnering with castor oil producers on a revenue-sharing basis from oil and other final product sales,” according to their press release.

The new mechanical harvester is being developed by a consortium of Evofuel and Fantini s.r.l, together with Castor Oil Argentina S.A., an Argentinian company created to introduce castor as an extensive crop in the country, and BioFields SAPI de CV, a Mexican company focused on delivering innovative castor-based bio-products. In the coming months, semi-commercial scale field trials are expected to take place with Castor Oil Argentina S.A. and BioFields SAPI de CV.

There are people and companies out there still looking at castor oil as a viable biofuel feedstock. In the continent of Africa, there are several countries moving forward on castor oil to biodiesel to help struggling local farmers as well as help alleviate pressure on the need for fuel that seems to only come at high prices.

In South Africa, Thabang Mabapa, a self-confessed curious social entrepreneur and student at Wits University, is making biofuel from castor oil as a way to help the country’s current fuel price crisis as well as help local farmers. “We sell mainly to small-scale farmers and they buy because they see us using it in our tractors at the farm,” said Mabapa.

Mabapa told City Press that he was fortunate that the department of science and technology and a few other sponsors offered support for the research and development, which is still underway for the bio-jet fuel product line. “When we sell our biodiesel and castor oil, some of the revenue is dedicated to research to make sure the bio-jet fuel and bio-gasoline will also be sold commercially at some point,” said Mabapa. “I just focused on biofuel and that is my project, nothing else, and over time our product line expanded to biojet fuel and biogasoline and all this time we got more land for castor seed farming in North West, Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape.”