Ayala unit, Finnish firm tie up for 25-MW biomass plant

The Ayala group has tapped a Finnish firm to build a 25-megawatt biomass power plant project in Negros Island, which the homegrown conglomerate wants finished within two years.

Poyry PLC said in a statement it secured a contract with North Negros Biopower Inc. (NNBP) for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of the renewable power resource.

The deal covers the design up to the commissioning and testing of the project in Victorias City, which will mainly run on trash generated from the harvesting and processing of sugar cane—the main crop in the host city. Fuel will also come from “herbaceous and woody energy plants.”

“Pöyry is very active in the bioenergy sector around the world, but especially in the Philippines. With our deep knowledge of the challenges involved in implementing bioenergy projects, we are excited to be a part of the realization of the NNBP project,” said Poyry senior vice president Peter Heinzelmann.

NNBP, which is also engaged in solar power, is a unit of Negros Island Biomass Holdings Inc., which Ayala’s Presage Corp. acquired in 2017.

“We are proud that NNBP has seen great value in our unique EPC+ System Methodology, an approach which provides full transparency to the client throughout the project execution and the sharing in any savings from the agreed ceiling price at the close-out of the project,” said Richard Pinnock, president of Pöyry’s Energy Business Group.

“We continue to see great interest in our EPC+ approach as an alternative to the traditional EPC implementation approach, particularly in the bioenergy sector,” Pinnock said.

The NNBP project, which broke ground in November 2017, is backed by the ThomasLloyd SICAV-SIF-Cleantech Infrastructure Fund based in Switzerland.

The biomass plant is designed to generate 185 million kilowatt-hours of electricity yearly.

When finished, the project is expected to provide 675 new jobs on the power plant side as well as 2,500 jobs on the agriculture side.

Some 265,000 people are expected to use the electricity the plant will generate.