Sohel Parvez

Paragon Agro Ltd has signed up for establishing two biogas plants to generate a total of 430 kilowatts of electricity by the year-end.

The company says it will also make organic fertiliser using the slurry produced as by-product from the biogas digesters.

The plants will be set up in Mymensingh and Gazipur with a total investment of Tk 15 crore. Gazipur plant will generate 260 KW.

The proposed project will produce 25 tonnes of organic fertiliser a day and reduce carbon emissions by 12,000 tonnes a year, the company says.

“It will give us the scope to better manage poultry waste and become environment friendly,” said Moshiur Rahman, managing director of Paragon Agro Ltd, a concern of Paragon Group having tea-feed-poultry business.

“We will meet our power demand for poultry farms in the adjacent areas through these plants without depending on the national grid.”

Paragon is one of the few large poultry farms that have started venturing into clean energy at a time when unplanned disposal of poultry waste from tens of thousands of farms is causing soil and water pollution.

The stakeholders said poultry industry now produces around 7,500 tonnes of waste a day, which can be used to generate up to 50 MW of electricity.

The slurry will imporve the organic content of soil.

“Poultry waste has a very pungent odour and we have to face trouble in disposing those,” said Rahman.

He said the project will help manage the waste properly. “It will also reduce the risk of diseases.”

Paragon says it will use Chinse and Eurepean technologies to set up the biogas plants.

“We will borrow from IDCOL [Infrastructure Development Company Ltd] to establish the plants,” Rahman said.

Under the project, IDCOL will finance 60 percent of the total cost at an annual interest rate of 9 percent.

Also the managing director of Paragon Group, Rahman said the electricity to be generated from the biogas plants will be supplied to the adjacent poultry farms of Paragon Poultry Ltd at Tk 4 per kWh (kilowatt-hour).

He however said the biogas plants would not make the venture cost-effective.

“Power generation through the biogas plants will be costlier. We plan to benefit from selling the fertiliser,” he said.

Paragon expects that it will retail fertiliser at Tk 15 per one-kilogram packet. The price of bulk fertiliser will be lower.

Rahman said the company has already started works to implement the scheme. “We will be able to generate electricity from November.”

sohel@thedailystar.net