The world’s tallest grass may help some of Assam’s 803 major tea plantations and 1,22,000 registered small tea growers to get through the tough phase.
In August 2022, the government amended the Assam Fixation of Ceiling on Land Holding Act 1956 to allow tea gardens to use up to 5% of their land for non-tea purposes. Several tea gardens within a 300 km radius of the world’s first commercial 2G bioethanol plant using bamboo as raw material use the permitted portion of their area for bamboo cultivation.
This ₹4,930 crore plant on 43 acres in Numaligarh, about 260 km east of Guwahati, has been set up by Assam Bio Ethanol Private Limited (ABEPL), a joint venture of Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL), a Navaratna public sector undertaking, with Oy. Fortum based in Finland.
ABEPL experts said ethanol production is more costly in 2G or second-generation plants than in first-generation plants, but ensures food security, is more sustainable and leaves a lower carbon footprint. While 1G ethanol is produced from food crops using simple fermentation, 2G ethanol is obtained from non-food farm waste or residues.
“We pursued the bioethanol project after research in Finland showed that freshly harvested bamboo, chopped to a certain size, could be a sustainable substitute for food crops. And we are in the center of a region that is the largest producer of several bamboo species,” said an NRL spokesperson.
ABEPL streamlined the bamboo supply chain much before Prime Minister Narendra Modi dedicated the bioethanol plant to the nation in September 2025.
“We need five lakh metric tonnes of green bamboo to produce 49,000 metric tonnes of ethanol per year, apart from furfural, acetic acid, liquid CO₂ and bio coal for our 25MW in-house power plant,” the specialist said.
ABEPL has registered around 4,200 of the targeted 30,000 bamboo growers in 26 districts of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya and Nagaland. However, these are not enough to cover the annual income of the plant.
This is where tea gardens emerged, especially those that have land available for non-tea activities such as tourism and horticulture. “Some tea gardens have started planting bamboo. Our members are also thinking about it,” Bidyananda Barkakoty, adviser, North East Tea Association, told The Hindu.
Some growers believe that filling the bioethanol factory could help the industry overcome a near collapse caused by a number of factors, including climate change affecting production, aging tea bushes, high production costs, poor infrastructure and labor shortages.
Long term plan
ABEPL has implemented a structured linkage model that ensures sustainable bamboo supply and transparent sourcing. The model requires farmers to unload their produce at a decentralized chipping unit within 30-40 km of their farms. The chopped bamboo is then taken to the plant where it is immediately paid out to everyone on the line.
The main part of the plan is the long-term goal of distributing 60,000 seedlings free of charge to farmers. Although six species of bamboo have been identified for the biorefinery, the saplings are of the Bambusa tulda variety, locally called Jatibanh.
“Saplings grown in state government nurseries are vital for sustainable operations as bamboo takes about four years to be ready for harvest. We plan to grow bamboo on 12,500 hectares,” said an ABEPL official.
The tea gardens within a radius of 300 km from ABEPL cover about 250,000 hectares of land. The area that these gardens can offer is 12,500 hectares.
Published – 14 Feb 2026 22:26 IST