The administrators of leading Australian solar energy firm Solar Systems are already in talks with interested parties and hope to find a buyer or a merger partner for the cash-strapped company by the end of October, despite the recent failure of the firm to attract investors.
Stephen Longley and David McEvoy of PricewaterhouseCoopers were appointed voluntary administrators, a form of early bankruptcy protection, by the board of Solar Systems last week after negotiations with two US investors broke down at the last moment.
Melbourne-based Solar Systems had been seeking up to A$100m ($86m, £52m) to fund more R&D into lowering costs for its solar dish, one of the two key components of its concentrated solar photovoltaic technology, as well as finance expansion into the US and Asia.
Solar Systems had planned to build the country's first large-scale solar energy plant, a A$42m, 154MW facility in the Victorian town of Mildura. The status of that project, which had attracted A$129m of government funding, is now unclear.
The move to call in administrators came after one of its largest shareholders, the utility company TRUenergy, announced that its Hong Kong-based parent CLP had decided to write off its A$53m investment because of the failure to find another major financial or strategic partner.
TRU paid A$40m for a 20 per cent stake in Solar Systems in February 2008, and promised to fund the development of the Mildura facility, as well as support the construction of up to 1GW of projects throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
TRU and Solar Systems blamed the tight credit markets for the failure to find a new partner, but Longley and McEvoy said they have already entered talks with potential investors.
The move comes as the Australian government looks to reconfigure its planned Solar Flagships programme, which had involved providing A$1.5bn to help fund the construction of four large solar power stations totaling 1GW of capacity.
Boston Consulting Group has been hired to review the programme and suggest changes after the solar industry suggested that more, smaller-scale projects would be a better alternative, and noted that more money would need to be spent to meet the government's target. The result of that review is expected to be announced later this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment