Great Esken fire sale yields £9m from sale of stake in bioenergy business
Esken has sold off its stake in the Mersey Bioenergy biomass plant for £9m.
The aviation and renewable energy group, formerly known as Stobart, has sold to UK Waste Resources and Energy Investments L.P., a member of the Bioenergy Infrastructure Group which also owns the biomass plant at Ince, near Chester and has an existing stake in the Mersey Bioenergy plant.
Mersey Bioenergy owns and operates a combined heat and power plant in Widnes and the Disposal is part of Esken’s ongoing strategy to sell everything and wind the business up.
Esken owned a 39.6% shareholding and £7.3m of unsecured 13.5% loan notes with a ten-year term ending in November 2024. The shareholding and loan notes had been fully written down by Esken, with a £nil net book value as at 31 August 2022, and the investment in Mersey Bioenergy did not contribute to either profit or loss for the Group in the year ended 28 February 2022.
The cash payment of £9m will be used for repayment of debt and working capital purposes and aims to be signed off before the end of August 2023.
This disposal does not impact the Mersey Bioenergy Fuel Supply Agreement with Esken Renewables, which expires July 2035.
Bioenergy Infrastructure Group (BIG) takes long term investments in sustainable power sources. The business announced in 2021 that the Ince Bio Power facility, located at Peel NRE’s Protos in the Net Zero North West industrial cluster, has been funded through the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio (NZIP) to develop a carbon capture demonstration project, designed to scale carbon capture technology.
