Guwahati: Numaligarh Refinery Ltd on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding with Manipur to source bamboo for its upcoming bio-refinery.

The MoU was signed between Bruno Ekka, the senior chief general manager (marketing and business development), NRL, and Sambhu Singh, the additional chief secretary, forest, in the presence of Manipur chief minister N. Biren Singh and managing director (in-charge) NRL S.K. Barua during the course of the first Northeast Development Summit in Imphal.

The development summit was inaugurated by President Ram Nath Kovind yesterday.

The MoU will enable sourcing of 1.5 lakh tonnes/annum of bamboo with a total turnover of more than Rs 30 crore by identifying bamboo catchment areas for primary processing by the communities.

"It will also enable setting up of bamboo-processing clusters in Manipur, which will ultimately help the farmers to promote bamboo plantation and processing for value addition along with providing large scale sustainable employment opportunities for such farmers. Possibilities are being explored for availing funds from the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development for bamboo plantation and setting up semi-processing units in Manipur," a statement from the refinery said on Wednesday.

The plant shall have the capacity to process 5 lakh tonnes of green bamboo on an annual basis. The bio-ethanol so produced would primarily be used to blend NRL petrol as mandated by the National Policy on Bio-fuels, with the surplus to be sold to other oil marketing companies.

NRL's bio-refinery is designed to produce 49,000 tonnes of bio-ethanol annually with co-production of furfural and acetic acid from locally available non-food bio-mass feedstock utilising formicobio technology from Chempolis Oy, Finland.

Bamboo is one of the major non-food biomass resources available abundantly in the Northeast and is among the fastest growing plants.

The project is estimated to cost Rs 950 crore.

The refinery had signed MoUs with Nagaland Bamboo Development Agency and Arunachal Pradesh Bamboo Resources Development Agency in 2015 for sourcing of bamboo for the bio-refinery.