The Itakyry alcohol plant, located in northern Alto Paraná, built with public funds and idle for over a decade, may be on the verge of entering a new phase. The local municipality has signed an agreement with a Brazilian private company that plans to retrofit the facility and produce ethanol from corn, replacing sugarcane as the main raw material.
Miguel Ángel Soria, mayor of Itakyry, stated that the municipality has already officially handed over the facilities to the new operators, who plan a significant investment to upgrade the plant and bring it back online before the end of the year. "The important thing is that the factory starts operating again and stops being a stalled multimillion-dollar investment. We want it to generate jobs and opportunities for our people," the municipal chief declared.
The story of the alcohol plant began over a decade ago, when the Alto Paraná government pushed forward the project aimed at generating income for small agricultural producers in one of the department's districts with the highest poverty rates. The plant was built on a six-hectare municipal plot through an agreement between the departmental government and the municipality, with an investment of approximately G. 6.7 billion. The official inauguration took place in 2012, during the administration of then-governor Nelson Aguinagalde, with part of the equipment imported from Italy.
The installed capacity allowed for up to 24,000 liters of alcohol per day, although the initial projection was around 12,000 liters daily. The project envisioned the municipality temporarily managing the plant while a cooperative of local producers was consolidated, who would be the main raw material suppliers and direct beneficiaries of the venture. However, the initiative never took off.
Over time, the alcohol plant faced economic difficulties that completely halted production. The main obstacle was the cost of raw materials: sugarcane producers did not find it profitable to sell their output at the prices the factory could pay. The lack of incentives reduced the cultivated area, and without sufficient supply, the plant was unable to operate sustainably. What had been conceived as a development engine for hundreds of rural families ultimately became a "white elephant," inactive for more than ten years.
The expectation now is that the Brazilian company will introduce technology to make ethanol production from corn viable, changing the raw material profile and possibly overcoming the bottleneck that rendered the original project unfeasible.