SAO PAULO -(Dow Jones)- Newly created Brazilian sugar and ethanol company Raizen will invest the equivalent of $7 billion in its operations over the next five years, Raizen President Vasco Dias said Tuesday. Dias told reporters the bulk of the investment money, some $5 billion, will go to sugarcane and ethanol development and electric power generation. The rest, some $2 billion, will go to distribution and logistics. Raizen was created earlier this month as a joint venture of Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA.LN) and Brazilian sugar and ethanol group Cosan Industria e Comercio SA (CSAN3.BR). Raizen will produce and sell over 2 billion liters a year of ethanol made from Brazilian sugarcane. It will distribute biofuels and over 20 billion liters of other industrial and transport fuels annually through a combined network of nearly 4,500 Shell-branded service stations. Raizen also will boost sugarcane-crushing capacity to 100 million metric tons a year, up from current output of 60 million tons, Dias said. Ethanol production is expected to more than double over the next five years to five billion liters a year. -By Paulo Winterstein, Dow Jones Newswires; 55-11-3544-7090; brazil@dowjones.com
