PowerChina Guizhou Engineering provides a EUR 80.6 million supplier's credit for 148 MW Progressovka Solar Power Plant Project

In 2019, financial closure was reached on the 148 MW Progressovka Solar Power Plant Project, located in the Mykolayiv region of Ukraine. Chinese state-owned PowerChina Guizhou Engineering Co., Ltd. provided a two-year construction financing supplier's credit facility (loan) worth approximately EUR 80.6 million to Scatec Solar for the 148 MW Progressovka solar power plant in the Mykolayiv region of Ukraine. This facility carried a maturity period of two years and a final maturity date in June 2022. Scatec ASA provided a corporate guarantee for this facility. The facility was classified as trade and other payables in Scatec's financial statements. The proceeds of this facility were intended to be used by the borrower to finance an engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract with PowerChina Guizhou Engineering Co., Ltd. As of June 2019, Scatec Solar was in advanced stages of securing long-term debt financing as well as an equity partner for the project. Scatec Solar, a Norwegian company, was the equity investor and will also provide engineering procurement and construction management, operation and maintenance as well as asset management services. PowerChina Guizhou Engineering Co., Ltd. was the EPC contractor. This project was also supported by Ukraine's feed-in tariff or green tariff, which provides state support to renewable power producers. Progressovka Solar PV Park was a ground-mounted solar project which is spread over an area of 200 hectares. The 148 MW solar plant was expected to deliver 187 GWh per year. Risen Energy supplied the Photo Voltaic modules for the project. Huawei Technologies supplied its SUN2000-185 KTL inverters to the project site. Construction began on June 3, 2019 and was initially expected to be in commercial operation by the first half of 2020 (June 30, 2020 by the latest). It began commercial operations on July 1, 2021.

Additional details

1. The two-year construction financing facility covered 65% of the value of the EUR 124 million capital expenditure for the project. Therefore, AidData has coded the transaction amount of this project as EUR 80.6 million, which is 65% of EUR 124 million. 2. The exact commitment date of this loan is unknown. It was initially mentioned in June 2019 as part of the financing for this project; however, its two-year maturity period and June 2022 maturity date suggests a commitment or drawn down in the loan proceeds in 2020. For now, AidData has assumed the loan was commited in 2019, as that was when it was first mentioned in that year and the project reached financial closure that year, but has marked the commitment_date_estimated? field as True. This issue merits further investigation.

Number of official sources

6

Number of total sources

16