Swiss bank backs Tees biomass firm
MIDDLESBROUGH-based green energy firm Helius has secured a £2m cash injection from the European bank Credit Suisse.
The company, which recorded a £1m operating loss for the first six months to March 31, said the equity would be used to ‘further develop its business and pipeline projects’.
More than 3,500,000 shares were due to be traded on AIM today, which showed a slight rise on yesterday’s share value to 18.63.
Credit Suisse, only the second institutional backer to fund the firm after venture capital fund General Capital Venture Finance, which has a 9% stake, will be a minority interest. Shareholder were asked to approve a discounted share offer of 13.5p for the Swiss bank.
The company said investment activity had increased substantially from £0.5m in the first half of 2007 to £1.3m, reflecting progress on the flagship biomass project at Stallingboough in Lincolnshire, which won the go-ahead from the government earlier this summer.
The Section 36 consent under The Electricity Act 1989, by Energy Minster Malcolm Wicks, means the company can power ahead with building a 65 megawatt biomass power plant on the south side of the Humber estuary.
The power station is the first phase of an integrated bioenergy development on a 36-hectare site 4km from the port of Immingham. It will produce enough renewable electricity for around 100,000 homes and will save approximately 450,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year compared with a similarly sized coal-fired power station.
The company has similar plans for a plant on Teesside and is well advanced on a smaller plant for Rothes in Scotland.
Options to use the heat produced by the plant either on site or locally are also being considered.
At the time, the government said the announcement took the UK closer to achieving its renewable energy targets and “another stepping stone towards powering a greener, cleaner UK.”
John Seed, Middlesbrough-based md of Helius Energy, said the consent allowed Helius Energy “to begin to implement our plans for the production of renewable electricity from sustainable biomass,” but would not reveal how it planned to finance the £200 million development, which is expected to be operational by 2011.
It will require around 430,000 tonnes of sustainably sourced feedstock each year.
It said “a significant amount” would come from the UK.
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