Construction of EUR 5.5 million biogas plant kicks off in Vrbas

Serbian Minister of Agriculture Dusan Petrovic and Vojvodina Prime Minister Dr Bojan Pajtic laid Friday the foundation stone for the first phase of a biogas plant within the agricultural company Sava Kovacevic.

By building this plant, Sava Kovacevic will be the first company in Serbia to use biogas from livestock manure to generate electric and heating energy.

Construction of this plant is financed by Mirotin–energo from Vrbas, the contractor is Gik Inzenjering from Kanjiza, whereas the main contractor for technical and mechanical works is Austria's Biogest.

The total value of the works on the construction of the first phase of this plant is close to EUR 5.5 million, 25 percent of which are given by the company Mirotin, whereas the rest will be provided by Erste Bank, as a project investment. The project is to be implemented within nine months.

According to the words of Zdravko Pavicevic, director of Mirotin Group, part of which is Sava Kovacevic, this biogas plant will have the capacity of 1 megawatt (MW) in the first phase, which will be quadrupled once the plant is fully completed.

- We plan to keep the existing jobs, as well as to create new ones since we are not increasing our productivity by cutting the number of jobs, but by boosting the production and by developing and expanding our system - Pavicevic stressed and added that that company was putting effort into discovering Serbia and its huge resources, both natural and production and technological ones.

Sava Kovacevic has 1,800 heads of cattle and 5,000 hectares of land, as well as 27,000 tonnes of manure.