DuPont, an American chemical company, is seeking potential partners for bio-fuel project to produce cellulosic ethanol.
The company is currently engaged in talks with interested parties including fuel companies and agribusinesses in the US, Southeast Asia, China, Brazil and Europe.
In an interview with Dow Jones, DuPont biorefineries business director Jan Koninckx said the company is intending to take up a minority stake in the venture and prime role in setting production up.
DuPont, meanwhile, is set to invest more than $200m to develop a cellulosic ethanol plant in Nevada, Iowa, due to open in 2014.
The plant is estimated to have an annual production rate of 30 million gallons of ethanol from corn-plant residue left in fields after farmers harvest their grain.
The profitability of the plant would be rated from the annual production and full scale use of DuPont’s cellulosic production methods, Koninckx added.