Saudi Arabia-based National Agricultural Development Company (NADEC), one of the largest agricultural and food-processing share stock companies in the Middle East and North Africa, is planning to build a power generation plant using cow dung.
According to a Bloomberg report July 25, NADEC has also started initial talks with a group of local banks to raise funding for the estimated US$200 million biomass plant project, which will also include building a solar plant on the farm.
However, in a statement, NADEC says that its plans to build a “power generation plant using cow dung for meeting its energy needs” is still under study as it seeks to find technical solutions that take into account the benefits from saving oil and gas, electricity and water needs, technical options, regulatory requirements, infrastructure, population increase and improvement of domestic added value chain.
Furthermore, the “investments and figures published are inaccurate” as work is still in progress to assess the “volume of investments” and conduct the relevant feasibility study. The company says it will announce the results of the study and target plans once they are made though without indicating when this may be expected.
We would like to point out that, in order to contribute to the Saudi Vision 2030 and the National Transformation Program 2020 and identify the best sustainable and environmentally friendly energy sources as part of diversifying available energy sources and in line with the company’s policy for constantly searching for every possible reduction of production costs, NADEC has contracted with one of the best international companies to study the appropriate solutions to find the best energy mix, the company said in the statement.
With close to 80 000 dairy cows, NADEC is one of the world’s largest 100 percent vertically integrated dairy businesses.
