Clean gas innovator Powerhouse’s relationship with its landlord deepened today, as it stumped up a £3.8 million line of credit to fund development of Protos Park,Peel NRE’s prototype park in Chester for advanced plastic recycling.
Executive-chaired by former MP Tim Yeo, Powerhouse claims proprietary DMG technologycapable of extracting low-carbon hydrogen and electricity from end-of-life plastics.
The credit facility of up to six months is being advanced through a special purpose vehicle set up by both parties, tasked to provide design services for the Protos concept. The park will be Powerhouse’s first deployment of DMG at commercial scale
DMG’s productivity is benchmarked to produce up to two tonnes a day of 99.999% pure, “road-quality” hydrogen from a typical plant’s daily 40 tonnes of waste.
Peel, landlord to sea- and airports as well as industrial parks across the North, plans Protos to be the first of several industrial recycling centres nationwide. It already has a director on its tenant’s board.
The SPV will use the loan to source necessary major capital items with long lead times, such as Protos’ thermal conversion chamber, a syngas process module, and compression and power generation kit. Both parties see the loan as a stepping-stone to longer-term collaboration, including a possible deal licencing DMG at other Peel sites.
An MP until 2015, Yeo chaired a Commons committee shadowing DECC, the forerunner ministry to BEIS.
He welcomed today’s financial troth-plighting: “Powerhouse is now putting its money where its mouth is”.
“We are confident that this loan facility has the great benefit of protecting the delivery schedule for Protos”, Yeo added. “The plant is modular and the majority of our project fabrication activities are covered in these contracts.”
Estate manager Peel NRE’s clean energy investments include solar PV installations at its Doncaster-Sheffieldand John Lennon Liverpool airports.
Investors liked today’s announcement. On the FTSE AIM index, Powerhouse’s shares had risen nearly 7% by 1pm.
