Exclusive Pongamia Investment in Brazil

LISBOA, PORTUGAL, January 10, 2013

This project involves the cultivation of 350 hectares on land on which 196.000 Pongamia Millettia Pinnata trees will be planted. This project is located in Fazenda Garça Branca - Trairi, Northeast Brazil.

This is a high yield Pongamia tree plantation scheme, benefitting from medium and long-term profits secured with freehold land ownership. Our professional plantation management team is lead by our project manager Carlos Duarte, along with highly skilled forestry engineer Raimundo Gonçalves.

Verde Vida, a specialist environmental company which takes care of forestry permits, carries out all the environmental studies needed for the project and assists on our behalf in obtaining the required general permits needed for planting.

All plots within the farm have direct road access and the farm itself is on the border of a new asphalted road. Flecheiras Beach, rated one of the top beaches in Brazil, is only 6 km away.
Pongamia Millettia Pinnata

This is a tree which stands to become an important second generation biofuels crop. Pongamia is capable of producing inedible oil (biodiesel), starch (ethanol) and the production of biogas is enabled by fermenting the pressed cake from the tree. The tree itself can be used as wood fuel and thus serves to prevent soil erosion by replacing wood cutting in the wild. It can be grown sustainably on marginal lands and does not need to compete with food production.

Millettia Pinnata, instead of wearing out soils, contributes to their recovery and enrichment: instead of consuming nitrogen from the soil, it fixates the nitrogen in the ground via a network of root nodules.

Its dense network of lateral roots and its thick, long taproot make for heightened drought-resistance and it is well-suited to the intense heat and sunlight.

Pongamia gives high profit yields by way of the following products:
• Bio-Oil
• Bio-Ethanol
• Livestock Feed
• Soil Recovery
• Carbon credits

Its Resumed Key advantages are:
• Drought resistant (500-2500mm rainfall per year)
• Heat resistant (-1 to 50 degrees Celsius)
• Modern fully mechanical harvest
• Synchronized flowering and harvesting
• Tolerates saline conditions
• Timber producing
• Produces wood suitable for burning as a fuel
• Particularly ornamental
• Tolerates alkaline soils
• Legume (nitrogen fixing tree) soil fertilizer
• Fast growing: 15 m high trees at age 15
• High oil yields per tree: up to 2 tonnes/hectare/year
• High oleic acid content (C18:1) of the extracted oil
• CO2 sequestrating of the perennial tree (up to 30 ton/hectare/year)
• Tolerant to water logging
• Seed cake as livestock nourishment

Advanced company know- how and technology:

Energy Crops Brazil is focusing its efforts on two complementary areas of research and operation:
a) The production of high performance energy crops, combined with
b) Cost efficient industrial processing of energy crops.

For this purpose, direct and extensive cooperation on technological research is being developed with relevant research institutions including:
• EMBRAPA (the worldwide operating Brazilian Research Company on Agriculture and Livestock)
• UECE (Ceará State University)
• FAEC (Federation of Agriculture in Ceará State)
• UFP (Piauí Federal University)
• IFCE (Federal Institute of Ceará, linked with agriculture know-how within Russas Irrigated District)
• IPT (Institute for Technological Research, from Vicente Mazzarella, in São Paulo).
• Verde Vida (environmental engineering)

Our agricultural production is focused on our own professional farms located in Trairi and in the Russas Irrigated District, in the state of Ceará, Northeast Brazil.

Energy Crops Brazil is a multilingual company with offices in Brazil (Fortaleza, Ceará state capital), Portugal (Lisbon) and, as of April 2013, in Spain.

Energy Crops Brazil (ECB) is a company dedicated to high performance biomass crops, acting on both the agricultural, industrial and services sides of the business.

We apply state of the art agricultural procedures on our own plantations of Elephant Grass, Milletta Pinnata Pongamia, Oil Palm Trees, Moringa Oleifera and Silver Leaf.

ECB performs subsequent industrial processing of energy crops, obtaining high value, added end products (biomass pellets and briquettes, pure plant oils) and derivatives (agriculture fertilizers and livestock nourishment), not competing with food production.

As a result of our combined know-how, we also supply third parties with dedicated consultancy turn-key solutions, covering all the major business steps in the biomass fuels sector: starting with market and economic viability studies, covering farms and processing plants implementation and management, and acting as a specialized business broker in the area.

ECB develops high performance energy crops, aiming also to provide biomass raw materials for third parties specialized in second generation biofuels technology to produce bio-ethanol, bio-gasoline, activated carbon and other high value products for energy markets.