Page 10 - Malaysia Exporters of Biomass & Related Services Directory

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for wood products and bioenergy. An
additional 20 million tonnes could be
mobilised for additional uses such as
pellets, biofuels and biobased chemical
industries. In total, this is approximately
30% of the solid biomass the palm oil
industry is expected to generate annually
by 2020.
In order to achieve the targets of the NBS
2020, creating various new high-value
biomass industries for the industry and
the nation, pellets would be a natural point
of entry to start mobilising the industry,
as the technology is reasonably mature,
the cost of developing infrastructure
relatively low (i.e., RM30 - 40 million per
plant with a capacity of 100,000 tonnes)
and the payback of 3 - 5 years relatively
quick, coincidentally long-term contracts
for pellets also range from 3 - 5 years.
Hence, while pellets enable profitable
mobilisation today, they also act as a
buffer. Should higher value biobased
chemicals materialise earlier or should
Malaysia capture a bigger share of the
global biobased chemicals market,
biomass can be diverted from pellets to
capture these higher value opportunities.
Business-as-usual uses of biomass for
wood products, bioenergy and pellets
provide an opportunity to generate value
from biomass today, with the potential
to generate revenue of RM200 - 1,000
per dry tonne of solid biomass input. In
parallel, resources should be expended
to invest in longer-term projects around
biofuels and biobased chemicals. These
have higher risk and are expected to
reach commercial scale only in the 2015
- 2020 timeframe, however have the
potential for significantly higher value
creation – on the order of RM1,000 - 3,000
of revenue per dry tonne of solid biomass
input. A year since the launch of NBS
2020, technology for biobased chemicals
has seen significant acceleration with
the first commercial scale biobased
chemical plants completed late 2012
and operational in 2013, making the
opportunity a closer reality for Malaysia.
The biggest long-term opportunity
for Malaysia remains in the space of
biobased chemicals, with a forecasted
global market size of RM110 - 175 billion
by 2020. A critical success factor will be
the mobilisation of biomass, both with
regards to volumes, logistics – how to
move it efficiently from plantations to
centres of production – and cost – to
ensure globally competitive costs
compared to other biomass. While
larger plantations will be able to
participate in this opportunity given
their individual scale, there is still merit
in the use of partnerships to reduce
risk. And it will be critical to create best-
practice partnership structures to enable
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