USGC: Ethanol Education Is Essential to Winning Mexican Market

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March 19, 2019

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(U.S. Grains Council/Ethanol Producer Magazine) The key to making informed decisions is education, and that’s just what the U.S. Grains Council’s goal has been regarding increasing demand for U.S. fuel ethanol in Mexico.

After Mexico changed its law in 2017 to allow up to an E10 blend outside of three major cities—Monterrey, Mexico City and Guadalajara—the Council has been fielding questions about the challenges and opportunities with offering ethanol-blended gasoline in the country.

“One of the major challenges has been misinformation propagated by those who have an interest in keeping ethanol out of Mexico,” said Ryan LeGrand, USGC Mexico director. “The opposition has informed service station owners that they will need to spend upwards of $200,000 USD to convert their stations to be able to handle E10. This simply isn’t true.

“Mexican service stations use the same Underwriters Laboratory standards as we do in the U.S., so their underground tanks and pumps are more than capable of handling an E10 blend.”

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Current U.S. ethanol exports to Mexico are primarily for industrial uses like perfumes, solvents and beverages, but more retailers in border cities are buying pre-blended E10 at U.S. terminals for resale at convenience stores and service stations. Council programs will continue to focus on helping sellers understand the benefits of increased ethanol use.

U.S. ethanol exports to Mexico have increased by more than 3.5 million gallons between the 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 marketing years, from 27.6 million gallons to 31.1 million gallons, respectively.

Mexico represents a total annual E10 potential market of 1.2 billion gallons for ethanol, which could be fulfilled by growing quantities of locally-produced ethanol and affordable U.S. ethanol to fill in the missing demand.

For more information on Mexico and Ethanol, click here.

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