Tata Chemicals invests in jatropha seedling company

January 1, 2009

BY Ryan C. Christiansen

Web exclusive posted Dec. 17, 2008, at 4:37 p.m. CST

Tata Chemicals Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Mumbai, India-based Tata Chemicals, has announced it will invest $25 million in JOil Pte. Ltd. of Singapore, a jatropha seedling company that has been set up by Singapore's Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory Ltd. (TLL), along with other Singapore investors.

Jatropha is a biofuel crop that is being researched and grown in developing countries as a feedstock to produce biodiesel.

According to Homi Khusrokhan, managing director of Tata Chemicals, the agreement will help to decrease variability in yields from the cultivation of jatropha. Temasek Life Sciences will provide lab-engineered varieties of jatropha through JOil to Tata Chemicals for the company's biofuels program. Tata said the varieties become productive sooner than other known varieties and provide improved and more consistent yields.

Under the agreement, Tata Chemicals has secured exclusive marketing rights for JOil's jatropha seedlings in India and East Africa and has secured a preferential price for jatropha seedlings. JOil will set up tissue culture labs and market jatropha seedlings that are produced using the micro-propagation technology that has been developed by Temasek Life Sciences.

Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory was established in August 2002 by the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University and Temasek Holdings.

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