SOFIA (Bulgaria), March 26 (SeeNews) – Bulgarian engineering, construction and energy group Enemona has more than doubled to up to 350 million levs ($282 million/179 million euro) its planned investments in three biomass units by the end of 2014 as demand turned out to be higher than expected, a company official said on Wednesday.
“According to estimates based on current prices, the total [value of the projects] is some 300-350 million levs,” Enemona’s managerial agent Bogdan Prokopiev told SeeNews on the sidelines of a news conference.
Enemona plans to put into operation at the end of 2010 a biomass plant with a heating capacity of 50 megawatts in the Danube town of Nikopol, in northern Bulgaria, in which it plans to invest 100 million levs, Prokopiev said. The company initially intended to spend 70 million levs on the unit, which was planned to have a heating capacity of some 30 megawatts.
The plant in Nikopol will have electricity generation capacity of 15 megawatts.
“The planned capacity has been increased because of higher demand, new plants are due to open,” Prokopiev said, adding the industrial zone in the northern city of Pleven, close to Nikopol, attracted new business like Spain’s Green Fuel Corporacion. The Spanish company plans to build two biofuel plants and supporting facilities in Pleven at a combined cost of 70 million euro ($110.1 million).
Enemona will also build cogeneration plants in the cities of Dobrich and Lom in northern Bulgaria, thus bringing the total capacity of the three units to 140 megawatts.
The company is in talks with several investment banks and funds investing in renewable energy sources to secure financing for its project in Nikopol, and expects to sign a loan deal by the end of the third quarter, Enemona's corporate policy manager Prokopi Prokopiev told reporters on the sidelines of the same news conference.
Enemona expects to shortlist possible lenders or chose one within half a month, Prokopi Prokopiev said.
“It [the funding which the company will seek for the project in Nikopol] will most probably be 40 million euro,” Prokopi Prokopiev said and added one of the banks, with which Enemona is in talks is the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), alongside other European banks and a Japanese one.
Based in the northern town of Kozloduy, Enemona started as an engineering company providing services related to the country's sole nuclear power plant located in the same town. It, however, has been expanding its energy business in the hope of capitalising on the sector’s prospects for growth.
Company shares last traded at 18 levs at 1138 GMT, up 2.6% from the previous close on the stock exchange in Sofia.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)
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