NEXIF Energy, the Asian and Australian power company, announced on March 16 that it has entered into debt facility and partnership agreements for the development of a 92MW gas-fired co-generation project at the SSP industrial estate in the Rayong province of Thailand.

The Rayong co-generation project will sell electricity under a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) and serve industrial customers in the SSP industrial estate located in the fast-growing Eastern Economic Corridor of Thailand. It will utilize the latest, most efficient combined cycle gas turbine technology available at this scale.

Debt funding for the project is provided by a consortium of Kasikornbank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Standard Chartered Bank (Thai), while the equity funding is by Nexif Energy and its project partner, Ratch Group Public Company Limited.

Ratch is a leading power and infrastructure company active in Thailand and across the Asia-Pacific region and is taking a 49% stake in the project, with Nexif Energy holding 51%. Nexif Energy was formed in August 2015 by Nexif, a Singapore-based independent power management company, and Denham Capital, a leading global energy-focused private equity firm.

Expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2022, the co-generation project represents Nexif Energy’s first investment in Thailand, according to Nexif founder and co-CEO Surender Singh. Another Nexif founder and co-CEO Matthew Bartley notes the project is a significant step in implementing the company’s plan to become a leading power generation developer and investor in Asia and Australia. “We look forward to acquiring and developing more projects in Thailand and our other target markets,” he says.

Ratch CEO Kijja Sripatthangkura, on the other hand, says the project is the company’s strategic move in establishing a generation base in the Thai eastern region, which will help secure national power supply to the industrial sector. “Ratch is committed to a long-term partnership with Nexif Energy and welcomes the alignment of our investment goals and target Asian and Australian markets,” he adds.        

Saurabh Anand, managing director at Denham Capital, says the Rayong project brings Nexif Energy closer to its target of investing in a portfolio of more than 1,000MW of renewable and dispatchable generation projects in Asia and Australia by 2021, following its acquisition of the Song Glang hydropower in Vietnam in December 2019.