Rudolph Castillo

One company which submitted a bid today is Cohune Energy Limited. They plan to use the very abundant cohune to provide energy to the national grid. Today company representative Rudolph Castillo told News Five that his project is about much more than just creating energy.

Rudolph Castillo, Cohune Energy Limited

"This is not just a power plant project that will generate electricity. It will in addition create three new industries in Belize; jobs, foreign exchange, including a cohune industry, a thirty-thousand acre plantation. We will be creating a bio-fuel industry, mixing the cohune oil with bio-fuels, and also we'll be exporting the cohune oil both as edible oils and as cosmetic oils. It will really push our economy in the direction it needs to go. Cohune has been around and tested for a hundred years in Belize. There've been about twenty or more projects that have started in Belize with mega investments as well, not as big as this one…but basically the shortfall has been that they have relied on the existing cohune in the wild. We think that planting it will solve the supply issue. In addition we are fully invested in the equipment that will bring cohune to the forefront of energy in Belize. I think that we have the capacity to even start exporting energy through cohune. We have acquired the expertise of universities in Europe, in Florida, as well as the fact that cohune is one of the roughest and toughest trees in Belize. It's hurricane resistant…it's almost fire-resistant as well. There's no tree like that in Belize probably, you know, where it can withstand pretty much any exogenous shock that would potentially put the project at risk."

The twenty bids submitted will be considered over a period of three months before a decision is announced.

Channel 5