Methanol company signs billion dollar deal

The AUM project is the latest and largest venture of the MHTL to date and will consist of seven plants from which the final products will be 1.5 million metric tonnes of urea ammonium nitrate solution and 60,000 metric tonnes of malamine per year.

The complex, which will cost a total of TT$9.4 billion, will include an ammonia plant, a urea solution plant, a nitric acid plant, an ammonium nitrate plant, a urea ammonium nitrate mixing plant and two melamine trains.

Rampersad Motilal, Managing Director of MHTL in his address at the signing, Hilton Hotel yesterday said, the MHTL through the construction of the AUM project, would achieve one of its fundamental strategic goals - the diversification of its portfolio from a single product company to a multi-product company, while remaining in the business of the manufacture and marketing of petrochemicals.

Christine Sahadeo, Minister of State Enterprises in the Ministry of Finance and acting Minister of Energy and Energy Industries, congratulated the MHTL on the loan agreement which she said represented both KfW IPEX’s largest loan to any single entity as well as MHTL’s largest financial commitment to date.

She said the MHTL had propelled itself to become one of the most successful and globally competitive companies in the methanol industry.

The minister added that the MHTL’s thrust into downstream products was in line with the government’s policy to support primary petrochemical projects that include a component to move into the downstream sector.

Sahadeo said, “although numerous new downstream projects have been announced within the last year in TT, MHTL’s AUM project was the first project of its kind to secure financing and have financial closure”. KfW IPEX, she said, had loaned TT$856 million to MHTL’s former subsidiary company, Caribbean Methanol Company Ltd in 1991 and was responsible for loans of US$1.18 billion, TT$1.04 billion and TT$2.76 billion respectively for the construction of the TT Methanol Company’s second methanol plant, the Methanol IV Company and most recently, MHTL’s M5000 methanol plant.