November 24 (SeeNews) - Irish gasification technology and engineering company EQTEC [LSE:EQT] said on Wednesday that financial close has been achieved for the Belisce waste-to-energy project in Croatia and first phase funding for a second such project in Croatia, in Karlovac, has been secured.
“The projects are being funded through a mix of equity, debt and privately placed tradeable bonds,” EQTEC said in a statement.
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Both projects are being developed by Synergy Projects, EQTEC's Croatian joint venture with local project development partner Sense ESCO.
Sense ESCO has subscribed for additional shares in each of the Belisce and Karlovac projects, which has resulted in it owning 51% of the equity in each of them. Synergy Projects has retained 49% equity in both projects.
The funding requirement for Belisce recommissioning is some 4.2 million euro ($4.7 million), of which Sense ESCO will be providing 1.7 million euro, while EQTEC will provide the balance, in addition to the 550,000 euro loan previously provided.
The total funding requirement for Karlovac is expected to be some 10 million euro.
EQTEC and Sense ESCO will initially be providing 25% of the required funding through subscriptions to privately placed tradeable bonds and equity while third party investors and bank debt will be sought to fund the balance.
“Full funding required for the technology upgrades and subsequent re-commissioning at the Belisce plant has been secured, in order to upgrade the design and an increase in capacity to 1.5MWe from the original 1.2MWe,” the statement said.
The Karlovac plant will be developed in two phases of 1.5MWe each, to take advantage of the existing infrastructure, grid connection and power purchase agreement.
Partial funding for the first phase at Karlovac has been secured in order to accelerate completion of the detailed engineering design and order main equipment EQTEC and Sense ESCO are continuing discussions with investors and banks to secure additional debt and equity to fund Karlovac's current and future phases.
Furthermore, discussions are underway to sell equity and or tradeable bonds in the projects either during construction or after achieving successful commercial operation in line with EQTEC's general business strategy.
EQTEC announced the acquisitions of the two waste-to-energy plants in Croatia earlier this year.
($= 0.891 euro)