Waste and bioenergy
Announcements prior to September 2017, including this announcement, occurred under previous ownership.
21 November 2014
Foresight Group (Foresight) and the UK Green Investment Bank (GIB) have today announced an investment in the construction of a new waste wood CHP facility in Merseyside.
The 20.2 MWe and 7.8 MWth CHP plant will be powered by 146,000 tonnes of Grade B-C recovered wood each year, sourced by Stobart Biomass Products Limited (Stobart) under a long-term fuel supply contract. The facility will be providing power to the grid and the heat offtake will be used by Stobart’s adjacent wood drying facility.
It will be built within the Mersey Multimodal Gateway project, a 180 hectare logistics hub, just west of Liverpool.
The project, which is expected to become operational by December 2016, will be amongst the largest power plants of its type in the UK, and is the largest waste wood plant in the North West.
The plant will be built and operated by Danish power plant specialist Burmeister & Wain Scandinavian Contractor A/S, and over its expected 20-year lifetime, the facility is forecast to:
GIB is providing £16.9m of mezzanine loans and also making a £13.2m equity investment, via its Foresight-managed fund, UK Waste Resources & Energy Investments (UKWREI), in which it is the cornerstone investor.
The remainder of the £42.1m mezzanine finance is being provided by GCP Infrastructure Investors (GCP).
Investec Bank plc (Investec Bank) and Eksport Kredit Fonden (EKF) have together committed £42.5m of senior loans, while Stobart and BWSC will both take an equity stake with commitments of £9.8m and £2.6m respectively.
This project has brought together the same investors who are behind the construction of the 15 MW CHP Evermore Renewable Energy project in Northern Ireland, announced by GIB and Foresight in July 2013.
Shaun Kingsbury
Chief Executive, UK Green Investment Bank
Vince Cable
Business Secretary
Philip Kent
Senior Investment Manager at Foresight Group, and Director of Mersey Bioenergy Ltd
Christian Grundtvig
Director of Project Development & Investments of BWSC A/S
Adam Gordon
Co-head of Power Finance at Investec
Richard Butcher
CEO, Stobart Energy & Infrastructure
David Conlon
Director Gravis Capital Partners
Media enquiries
Total project value: £110.3m
Total GIB direct investment: £16.9m mezzanine loan
Total GIB indirect investment (via UKWREI, its Foresight-managed fund): £13.2m equity
Investors: BWSC A/S, Stobart Group, UKWREI, Investec Bank, EKF, GCP and GIB
Environmental impact: reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of around 1.3m tonnes, equivalent to taking nearly 30,000 cars off the road
Energy generation: around 150 GWh of net electricity per year, enough to power more than 35,000 households Developer: BWSC A/S and Stobart Group
About the UK Green Investment Bank
The UK Green Investment Bank was launched in November 2012. With £3.8 billion of funding from the UK Government, it is the first bank of its kind in the world. It is a "for profit" bank, whose mission is to accelerate the UK's transition to a greener economy, and to create an enduring institution, operating independently of Government.
About Foresight
Foresight Group has been managing investment funds on behalf of institutions and retail clients for 30 years. With a background in Private Equity and Venture Capital, Foresight has diversified activities and today manages institutional funds principally in European Infrastructure (Solar and PPP), Environmental and UK small cap Private Equity, including six years of specific Infrastructure experience.
Foresight has in excess of £1.3 billion assets under management and boasts one of the UK’s leading Environmental infrastructure investment teams. It is responsible for managing approximately £150 million of environmental assets which include the £68 million mandate from the UK Government’s Green Investment Bank for UK environmental infrastructure. Foresight also manages the £60 million Foresight Environmental Fund (FEF).
About Investec Bank plc
Investec Bank plc is a specialist bank and asset manager. advises, structures, arranges and The Power and Infrastructure Finance division provides and arranges debt, equity, bond financing and financial risk management for power, infrastructure and PPP transactions around the globe.
About Eksport Kredit Fonden (EKF)
EKF strengthens the competitiveness of small and large Danish companies. As Denmark’s official export credit agency, EKF helps the foreign customers of Danish companies obtain financing and thus make it attractive for them to place orders in Denmark. EKF is part of the Danish state and is operated as a modern financial institution on commercial terms. In 2013, EKF helped create or maintain more than 16,500 Danish jobs.
About Gravis Infrastructure Investors (GCP)
GCP is the only UK listed infrastructure fund focused on investments in infrastructure debt. GCP is a closed-ended investment company incorporated in Jersey, admitted to the Official List and to trading on the London Stock Exchange's Main Market. Gravis Capital Partners, the manager of GCP has in excess of £1 billion of assets under management and has a leading team focused on debt finance across the renewables and general infrastructure sectors.
About BWSC
Burmeister & Wain Scandinavian Contractor (BWSC) is a world-leading turnkey developer, contractor, operator and service provider of medium and large-scale power plants. The technology is based on biomass, biogas and traditional fossil fuels, and over the past 30 years, BWSC has delivered more than 170 power plants to 53 countries worldwide. BWSC is currently constructing, operating or servicing power plants in, i.a. Suriname, Kenya, Panama, Lebanon and the UK. BWSC is an experienced EPC contractor of biomass power plants as the Widnes project is the company’s fifth biomass power plant project within recent years in the UK.
About Stobart Group
Stobart Group is an Infrastructure and Support Services business deriving income from Energy, Aviation, Civil Engineering and Investments. Its strategy is to drive growth and profitability in Energy and Aviation.
Stobart sources, processes and delivers fuel to power plants for third parties under long-term contracts. Revenue growth comes from the ongoing increase in tonnages supplied, which exceeded 900,000 tonnes in the year to February 2014.
Stobart plans to invest in minority stakes in sustainable CHP and anaerobic digestion plants over the next two years.