Apr 9 2010
The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC)’s Board of Directors has approved a loan of around $250 million for supporting an energy-efficiency project of ContourGlobal Solutions Holdings Ltd. The project will enable a bottling company of Coca-Cola to reduce its costs and energy consumption and also reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The loan will be used by ContourGlobal Solutions and its subsidiaries to build and operate Combined Heat and Power plants (CHPs) for plants of Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (CCH), predominantly in Nigeria and Eastern Europe. Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company is a bottling, distribution and sales company of the Coca-Cola brand.
The CHP’s energy efficiency can reach 90%, whereas traditional power plants can give only 35-40%. Furthermore, the QuadGen process of ContourGlobal Solutions has a carbon capture technology for removing around 95% of the carbon dioxide contained in the flue gases of CHP.
ContourGlobal Solutions is a subsidiary of ContourGlobal, which is an energy and power development and operating company based in New York with around 900 employees globally and having some sort of operational or developmental presence in markets such as Ukraine, Nigeria, Rwanda, Togo, Colombia, Brazil, the European Union and the United States. The company offers solutions to both multinational companies and governments. ContourGlobal focuses on markets including CHP and renewable energy.
The OPIC has previously offered political risk insurance and financing to one of ContourGlobal’s subsidiaries for a power plant with 100 MW of capacity in Togo. Established in 1971, the OPIC assists U.S. companies to invest overseas and promotes economic development in emerging and new markets.