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Recently, Saraff Biogas Energies Co.,Ltd and Saraff Energies Co.,Ltd has been awarded the "CSR-DIW Beginner Award" from the Department of Industrial Works, Ministry of Industry. As the industry standard of social responsibility throughout of the year 2012
Saraff Biogas Energies Co.,Ltd and Saraff Energies Co.,Ltd has been participated to the project CSR-DIW and has been selected as one of the organizations that have been standard for social responsibility involved in the year 2012.
In the picture: Mr. Vijay Kumar Saraff (left), Managing Director of Saraff Infotech Co.,Ltd ; a representative to receive a plate honored reward from Mrs. Bussaba Pruektarathikul (right), an executive consultant (Factory technology specialist); a ceremony of awarded shields and certificates certifying compliance with standards of the industry social responsibility (CSR-DIW) in year 2012 at the Grand Diamond Ballroom; IMPACT Convention Center, Muangthong Thani.
19 December 2012
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While Egat Plc is scrambling for new business strategies ahead of Thursday's ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court on its plan to list on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, private energy operators foresee limited impacts on investment in the domestic energy industry if Egat is told to scrap its plans for an initial public offering.
Chanin Vongkusolkij, the chief executive of Banpu Plc, which is involved in several energy businesses, said a halted listing plan should not affect investor confidence in putting more money into the energy sector.
"Investors are less concerned with this, as they know that the Independent Power Producer Scheme is still in place," he said.
The Energy Ministry plans later this year to call for bids from power companies to produce electricity.
The Supreme Administrative Court was originally scheduled to issue its ruling yesterday on whether Egat's listing is against the Constitution, but the ruling was rescheduled for Thursday.
In November, the court agreed to review a petition filed by 11 civic groups who questioned the legality of two decrees authorising the privatisation of the country's largest power producer. The court's halt order came a few days before Egat was to launch its initial public offering.
A source at Electricity Generating Plc, which is partially owned by Egat, said it would be good if Egat had to restart its listing plan as any rush will leave a number of questions unanswered
"There are unclear issues, including the role and power of the regulatory body," the source said. "Delaying the listing means Egat has time to ensure the full transparency of the plan."
If Egat is forced to return to square one, it is expected to take a year or two to prepare for listing.
Meanwhile, Dow Jones Newswires quoted Egat chief executive Kraisi Karnasuta as saying on Saturday that if the IPO were delayed, the state agency's overseas investments could be affected. He did not elaborate on how long the proposed investments might be delayed, nor how much Egat is planning to invest in power projects in Laos, Cambodia, Burma and China.
Egat originally planned to sell 1.245 billion shares to the public in its IPO, to raise between Bt31.1 billion and Bt34.9 billion, based on an indicative range of Bt25 to Bt28 per share.
Watcharapong Thongrung
The Nation : March 21, 2006
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Sometime in the early 1980s, as Sumet Tantivejkul remembers it, His Majesty the King took his trusted aide aside and said that he wanted him to look into the feasibility of using palm oil as an alternative to diesel as an energy source.
According to Sumet, His Majesty wished to keep his request quiet at the time and asked that the research be conducted discreetly, noting that the need for an alternative fuel would be realized in the decades to come.
Today, more than 20 years later, the need for an alternative to petroleum-based energy is all too apparent and HM the King’s idea of using palm oil as an alternative substitute for diesel is now a reality. As His Majesty declared in his birthday address to the nation, “palm oil seems to be a viable substitute.” He later went on to say that Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra “may have seen a royal car that runs on biodiesel, 100 percent of which is produced from palm oil. The exhaust smells good and doesn’t cause cancer.”
Referring to the finite nature of the world’s oil resources, His Majesty pointed out that it “could run out in years.”
In response to His Majesty’s address, the Energy Ministry announced that it would promote biodiesel through tax incentives. HM the King’s interest in biodisesel became more pronounced in 2000, when petroleum prices started to soar. The Thai government responded by launching the country’s first “car-free” day to conserve oil reserves in an effort to raise public awareness of air pollution and energy conservation. But a symbolic day was hardly going to make a difference: what the country needed was a long-term solution to the problem of the earth’s rapidly diminishing oil reserves. As His Majesty realized, one solution lies in biodiesel, a substitute made from organic matter – in Thailand’s case, palm oil.
A report prepared by researchers at Prince of Songkhla University and presented to the HM the King in 2000 showed, as His Majesty had predicted, that palm oil could be converted into a combustible form through a process called trans-esterification, in which palm oil is turned into methyl ester, a combustible compound capable of driving a diesel engine.
Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn saw for herself biodiesel drive agricultural machinery during a visit toward the end of 2000 to a royally initiated palm oil mill at the Pikul Thong Royal Development Study Center in Narathiwat. And in 2001, the Chaipattana Foundation, a charitable organization of which HM the King is honorary president and Sumet the secretary-general, began funding biodiesel projects.
The first step to producing a home-grown alternative to petroleum was to turn out industrial quantities of crude palm oil (CPO). In 2002, an 11.3-million-baht mill, capable of producing 50 tons of CPO per month, was built at the Ao Luek Land Settlement Cooperatives in Krabi. The plant is fed by oil palms grown on 25,000 rai of land that is worked by 3,700 farmers.
The next stage was to build biodiesel plants to convert large quantities of raw palm oil into a combustible form. In 2003, two biodiesel plants were built, one at Pikul Thong, capable of producing 400 liters per day, and a second at Prince of Songkhla University (PSU) that is capable of producing 1,000 liters of biodiesel per day.
According to PSU engineering professor Sunchai Klinpikul, who is supervising the project, the plants have sold every drop of biodiesel they have produced since 2002. The biodiesel also fuels six of the center’s vehicles at Pikul Thong, and at PSU more 100 university cars and forklifts are running on it. The only adjustment that is needed, according to Sunchai, is to change the metal or natural rubber accelerator valve to one made of synthetic rubber; otherwise any diesel vehicle can run on biodiesel.
The plants are not designed to meet the country’s fuel needs, Sumet points out, but “to serve as an example.”
Despite the modest scale of the royal project, it carries considerable weight. While there are no government subsidies imposed to boost biodiesel, the government has ordered state-owned PTT gas stations to sell B5, a blend of five-percent biodiesel and 95-percent regular diesel, at 75 satang less than regular diesel. And PTT subsidiary, Thai Olefins Plc, plans to open a biodiesel plant in the middle of next year capable of churning out 200,000 liters per day of B5 made from palm oil imported from Indonesia.
The biodiesel market is not favorable right now because it is more expensive to produce than regular diesel. But, as the world’s oil reserves dry up and its price rises, biodiesel may become an increasingly attractive venture.
That said, Thailand will never be able to produce enough palm oil to meet its energy needs – even with the sophisticated technology now available. One palm tree can yield about 27 kilograms of palm oil per year. According to Sunchai, the maximum amount of land available to grow palm oil trees is 12 million rai. That acreage of trees could potentially meet the energy needs of just 15-20 percent of the country’s diesel-powered vehicles.
Even so, palm oil-based biodiesel will help move Thailand toward economic self-sufficiency, which HM the King has espoused. And just by endorsing biodiesel, His Majesty has helped shape government policy – the Thaksin administration has announced that a 10-percent biodiesel blend will be introduced countrywide in 2012.
HM the King has been called the “Scientist Monarch” and the “Father of Thai Technology” – epithets that Sumet says are more than justified.
“When I was first approached about the idea of turning palm oil into biodiesel, I wasn’t sure what to think,” he says.
Once again, the King has demonstrated his amazing wisdom. I am so impressed with how he is always way ahead of everybody else.”
Reference Link: http://www.manager.co.th/aspbin/PrintNews.aspx?NewsID=9480000176958
Date of news: 26 December 2005
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