In 2004, U.S.-based Cargill and Brazilian sugar trader Crystalsev announced that they would build a small ethanol plant in El Salvador. The plant would have an initial production capacity of 32,000 gallons per year, and it would export all of its production to the United States. According to industry sources, the companies hoped to take advantage of the Caribbean Basins Initiative (CBI), a trade agreement signed in 2000 that allows Caribbean and Central American countries to export up to 210,000 gallons per year of ethanol into the U.S. duty-free.