A unit of Roxas Holdings Inc. (RHI) on Tuesday said it took it almost all of the San Carlos Bioenergy Inc. (SCBI) after it purchased the stake of the Jimenez family for about P1 billion.
The company said its unit, Roxas Pacific Bioenergy Corp., now controls some 93.68 percent of San Carlos, after it bought some of 64.02 percent holdings of Menarco Clean Energy Inc. of the Jimenezes.
This acquisition is the third in seven weeks, beginning with the 26.7-percent stake from the Zabaletas for P420 million on March 18, and followed by the acquisition of additional 2.96-percent stake of the Valmayors for P46.721 million on April 16.
The National Development Corp. remains as minority shareholder of San Carlos with 6.32-percent share.
“The acquisition of SCBI makes RHI the country’s biggest ethanol producer,” company Chairman Pedro Roxas said in a statement.
Company Vice Chairman Manuel Pangilinan said the increased stake in the SCBI will create synergies from its bioethanol plants and lead to higher efficiencies. “We hope to achieve greater economies of scale in our operations that will benefit the industry,” he said. The company said the acquisition is in line with the diversification initiatives of the group from purely sugar operations into bioethanol and cogeneration or renewable-energy business.
Roxol Bioenergy Corp., the ethanol arm of Roxas Holdings, was the top bioethanol producer in the Philippines last year, with 32.2 million liters, followed by San Carlos, with about 26.7 million liters.
This year Roxas earlier said the bioethanol business will contribute 20 percent of the company’s total revenues, though, officials failed to provide specific figures. Roxas Holdings is also moving to diversifying its business into power generation, a venture that it had announced a few years ago. The company has partnered with the Global Business Power of the Ty Family in studying the feasibility of putting up a 40-megawatt biomass cogeneration plant in the former’s La Carlota milling facility in Negros Occidental, using bagasse as feedstock.