UK-based John Laing Environmental Assets Group Ltd (JLEN), an environmental infrastructure investment fund has announced an investment in the Icknield Farm anaerobic digestion (AD) plant. The investment consists of the provision of a debt facility to repay existing loans and acquisition of a minority equity stake from private individuals who were the project's developers for an aggregate amount of around GBP 11 million (≈ EUR 12.3 million).
Located in Ipsden, South Oxfordshire, the Icknield Farm AD plant (Icknield Gas Ltd) was commissioned in December 2014. The plant has a capacity of about 5 MW and predominantly produces biomethane exported to the national gas grid.
The Icknield Farm AD plant is JLEN’s second investment in the AD sector, building upon the acquisition in August 2017 of the Vulcan AD plant, to establish a growing portfolio of AD assets and further diversify the company’s portfolio of environmental infrastructure projects including, wind, solar, waste, and wastewater.
The acquisition was funded by a draw-down under the company’s revolving credit facility and from internal cash resources and brings the total capacity of the renewable energy assets in the JLEN portfolio to over 259 MW.
We are pleased to make a further investment in the anaerobic digestion sector through the Icknield Farm AD plant, which has a proven operational history. The AD sector is attractive to JLEN due to the high proportion of inflation-linked revenues backed by government subsidy regimes, and we look forward to working with our partners in the sector, said Richard Morse, Chairman of JLEN.
First UK EnviThan installation
The Icknield Gas biogas plant is operated using a combination of corn silage, pig slurry, grain and whole-plant silage enabling the use of around 10 000 tonnes of pig slurry annually. It is also the first biogas plant in the UK with an “EnviThan” gas-upgrading facility from EnviTec Biogas UK Ltd, a subsidiary of Germany-headed EnviTec Biogas AG. The 370 Nm3 per hour unit has a sufficiently high delivery pressure without the need for additional compression.
In addition, the plant also has a 360 kWe cogeneration engine accredited under the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) and Feed-in-Tariff (FIT). The CHP is used for parasitic demands with the balance being fed into the grid.
