German energy company RWE plans a new joint venture with
Croatian state-owned energy utlity HEP after exiting their partnership on the
local 210 MW thermal power plant (TPP) Plomin 2, the two companies said on
Thursday.
RWE took the earliest possible option to exit the Plomin 2
shareholding structure after signing a build-own-transfer (BOT) deal with HEP in
1996, the companies said in a joint statement.
"Today we are exiting
Plomin 2, after we meet all environmental, technical and legal requirements, and
we are pleased to say that we are leaving HEP a facility that it can
independently exploit for the next 25 years," RWE representative Ralf Blomberg
said in the statement.
RWE's BOT deal with HEP on Plomin 2 involved
setting up a 50/50 joint venture, TE Plomin. The German partner also secured
funding under favorable terms for the project as at the time Croatia had no
access to such financing due to the economic and political conditions. The total
investment in the Plomin 2 project was around 300 million euro ($328.2
million).
The business activities of the planned joint venture will be in
line with the development of the energy sector in the region, where RWE's role
will be more focused on providing strategic advice in the energy production
segment, the statement said.
In Croatia, RWE is also active on the
electricity and gas supply markets.
HEP group owns and operates over
4,000 MW of installed generation capacity and 974 MW of heat production
capacity, including 25 hydroelectric plants and eight thermal power plants fired
by oil, natural gas or coal.