First India-China JV in Australia Sets Up Edible Oil Refinery

The first India-China joint venture in Australia, Riverina Oils and Bio Energy Pty Ltd (ROBE), has developed a 170,000-tonne oilseed crushing and edible oil refining plant with an investment of A$150 million (around Rs 830 crore) in Wagga Wagga, 470 km south-west of Sydney in New South Wales (NSW).

The plant will also produce 105,000 tonnes a year of vegetable protein meal for use in the Australian poultry, dairy and animal feed industry. The project has created 80 direct jobs, 200 construction jobs, and over 500 indirect jobs, besides contributing significantly to the local economy.

ROBE's key partners and shareholders include SP Chemicals, China, Asiawide Holdings, Singapore, Lotus Ventures, New York and India's leading transport and energy company, Bhoruka Industries. For technology, the company has partnered with Desmet Ballestra, a world leader in the oils and fats technology and a supplier of key components of solvent extraction and refining plants across the world.

ROBE's Managing Director D D Saxena told Business Standard: "Australia exports oilseed, but imports both edible oil and protein meal. The crush margins in Australia are the highest in the world. It has globally competitive pricing for oilseed exports, yet very high domestic prices for finished products. Value addition is central to the ROBE business proposition and critical to the future of the agri/food processing sector in Australia".

The ROBE agribusiness venture is described as the largest value-added greenfield investment on Australia's eastern seaboard and it is the first greenfield project to be funded by State Bank of India and Axis Bank. "Indian banks understand project finance and SBI has supported us through this difficult journey of bringing this project to fruition," Saxena said.

The initial approval for the project was given in early 2007 and the ground-breaking took place in September 2009, but bureaucratic and regulatory approval resulted in a three-year delay and a cost over-run of over A$20 million. The plant started producing crude oil in December 2012 and refined oil in the second week of February 2013.

"In December, our first shipment of 500 tonnes of crude oil was sent to Gokul Refoils and Solvent Ltd in India. Over the next five years, we plan to export about 20,000 tonnes of refined oil a year to the US and Asia," said Saxena, who had earlier run large food and agribusiness ventures for multinationals such as Unilever and Bakrie, and for India's Thapar Group. ROBE will focus on canola for the next six to eight months and then move to safflower, cottonseed, soybean and sunflower.

The food processing industry is the largest manufacturing employer in Australia with more than 312,000 jobs. Welcoming the Indo-Chinese joint venture, deputy premier of NSW, Andrew Stoner, said in a message: "We appreciate the jobs and flow-on economic benefits that the investment creates in regional NSW."

ROBE's official launch in Sydney was hosted by the Australia India Business Council, which plays a vital role in building bilateral business ties.