Firm sets Panay power project

Publicly listed A Brown Co. Inc. has unveiled plans to help alleviate the electricity shortage in the Visayas through a recently launched power project on the central Visayan island of Panay.

Officials said the company was set to begin construction of a 200-megawatt coal-fired power plant in the municipality of Concepcion in Iloilo province.

ABCI vice president Roel Castro said the company was targeting commercial operation of the first 100-MW unit of the plant by 2014 while the second component would be discussed after the first phase enters commercial operation.

“This will depend on the market situation by then,” he said. “The proposed power plant will increase Panay Island sources of reliable and stable electricity at competitive prices.”

The entry of the Concepcion power plant will be in time to address the projected power shortage in the Visayas by 2013-2014 caused by demand growth, the company added. The firm also hopes that the project will displace costlier and unreliable oil-based plants and barges in Panay and the Visayas.

The project would be a base-load plant and make use of Circulating Fluidized Bed Combustion (CFBC) technology, he explained.

ABCI is the holding company of the Brown Group of Companies primarily engaged in the business of real estate development, oil palm plantation development and milling and is now starting to venture into the utilities sector particularly in power.

Last year, ABCI formed two subsidiaries, Palm Thermal Consolidated Holdings Corp. (PTCH) and Panay Consolidated Holdings Corp. (PCLH) to handle the purchase of the proposed power plant.

After ABCI’s acquisition of the power company, which will implement the proposed Concepcion coal-fired power plant, it was renamed Palm Concepcion Power Corp. (PCPC) this year as the vehicle for the company’s entry in the power-generation business.

Meanwhile, during last week’s annual stockholders’ meeting, ABCI reported a 2010 net income of P485.5 million, representing a 371-percent increase from the previous year’s P102.9 million.

The growth was brought by the increase in the total 2010 revenues to P856 million from last year’s P625 million.