Agrivert secures new funding for two AD plants

Announcing the financing deal at the end of last week (21 August), Alexander Maddan, chief executive of Agrivert, said he was delighted to close the financing.
Mr Maddan explained: “It allows us to simplify our borrowing at lower cost and provides the funding for a significant growth of our business. It also allowed us to profitably exit Alcuin, our private equity partner for the last six years.”

The new funding is in the form of a 17 year, fixed rate infrastructure loan note at lower cost provided by GCP Infrastructure Investments Limited (“GCP”), a London listed infrastructure debt fund. The debt financing was financially supported by several of Agrivert’s existing equity investors and it provided a full exit for equity funds advanced previously by Alcuin.

Stormy Down and Coursers Farm

The funding will also be used to complete the construction of two new 40,000 tonne per annum, 3.0MWe AD plants, one in South Wales at Stormy Down, Bridgend and the other at Coursers Farm, St Albans, Hertfordshire. Agrivert started building both plants this summer and said that they will be commissioned in the second half of 2016.

With the additional two AD plants, Agrivert said it will have a renewable energy generating capacity of 13MWe across five wholly owned plants, producing base load electricity 24/7, 365 days a year. And, it expects to be recycling close to 200,000 tonnes of food waste and supplying 300,000 m3 of high quality PAS110 accredited organic digestate fertiliser to some of the country’s leading farms.”

Uncertainty

The Agrivert financing comes against a background of some uncertainty for the sector in the face of weakening desire by local authorities to launch food waste schemes because of spending cuts and concern within the AD market about volumes to serve plants under construction or operational.

On the funding for Agrivert, David Conlon from GCP commented “We are pleased to support Agrivert who we know as a strong credit, being the class leading builder and AD operator in the UK with a highly contracted, long-term business model.”

Advisers acting for Agrivert were Augusta & Co (financial), Reed Smith (legal), Tolvik (commercial) and SLR (technical). Burges Salmon (legal) acted for Gravis Capital Partners. Jones Day (legal) acted for Alcuin Capital Partners.