Sunpower wins centralised steam project worth 95m yuan

SUNPOWER Group, a China-based heat transfer technology company, said on Monday it has won a centralised steam build-operate-transfer (BOT) project in the Lianshui Economic Development Zone in Jiangsu province.

The total investment for the project is about 95 million yuan (S$20.8 million).

"Currently, the zone has no centralised steam facility and each manufacturing plant relies on its own individual small coal-fired boilers for steam. The small boilers are highly energy inefficient and very polluting with carbon and pollution emissions," the group said.

The group's subsidiaries have thus entered into a joint-venture (JV) agreement with Huai'an Qinglian Environmental Protection Engineering, a unit of the Lianshui Economic Development Zone's Central Management Committee, to form an entity to invest in the project together.

The group will hold a 95 per cent equity stake in the JV.

Phase I of the project will comprise two coal-fired boilers with a capacity of 40 tonnes per hour each and steam distribution pipelines, supplying steam to more than 20 companies in the zone.

The project was secured on a BOT basis for a concession period of not more than 30 years and is expected to begin operation in the second half of 2016.

According to the agreement, once the project is in operation for 30 days, the zone's authority will close down all the existing individual coal-fired boilers within the project in one month and disallow the usage of individual coal-fired boilers by new industrial projects or tertiary industrial projects.