Louisiana State Bond Commission has approved the sale of US$60 million tax exempt bonds by Biomass Power Louisiana LLC. The proceeds of the bond issue be used to build a new 240 000 tonne-per-annum biocoal production facility at the Port of Natchitoches, Louisiana (LA).
Canada-based Biomass Secure Power Inc. (BSP), a biomass fuel developer has announced that on 19 January 2017, the Louisiana State Bond Commission approved the sale of US$60 million tax exempt bonds by Biomass Power Louisiana LLC (BPL), a wholly owned subsidiary. Furthermore that it has engaged the Bank of America Merrill Lynch to sell the bonds on behalf of the company.
According to a statement, the proceeds of the bond issue will be used to build a new 240 000 tonne-per-annum capacity biocoal production facility at the Port of Natchitoches, Louisiana (LA). A 20 year off-take agreement has been confirmed to an undisclosed client for 200 000 tonnes-per-annum of biocoal, which is expected to generate annual sales in excess of US$40 million annually.
The investment at Natchitoches is phase one of a three phase development programme that will increase the plant production capacity to one million tonnes-per-annum. Torrefaction technology partner River Basin Energy (RBE) has received a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to provide a further 500 000 to 2 million tonnes-per-annum of biocoal. The MoU will be converted to a binding off-take agreement after trial samples from phase 1 operations have been received and evaluated by the buyer as being of the same quality or better than samples already made available from the RBE reactor.
As announced in a MoU in May 2016, Biomass Secure Power Inc. and River Basin Energy are in the process of merging the two companies prior to the closing date of the financing round.
