'Green' project in Ghana converts rubber trees to woodchips

ERJ staff report (DS)

London -- Africa Renewables Ltd ("AfriRen"), a London headquartered international renewable energy trading company, has launched a fresh round of fundraising for biomass projects across West Africa. The firm is seeking up to €30 million from qualified investors.

AfriRen's first energy trading project, a biomass extraction chain in Ghana, harvests redundant rubber trees and processes them into woodchips, which are then sold to European power houses and businesses in order to displace the burning of coal. The project is facilitated by an eight-year partnership with the Ghana Rubber Estates Ltd (GREL), a subsidiary SIFCA, West Africa's no. 1 agro-industrial group with a €600 million turnover.

The Ghana project will require a €5 million in investment. The target investment will fund biomass extraction and exportation projects in markets across the Western African countries over the next four years. As a result, AfriRen expects to grow annual production from 150,000 MT to 500,000 MT in that period.

AfriRen's partnership with GREL breaks new ground in connecting African produced biomass to European energy firms. Currently, almost all biomass currently imported into the EU comes from the Americas.

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Press release from AfriRen