By Alena Mae S. Flores Posted on Apr. 22, 2013 at 12:02am
Ayala Corp. is investing in power generation projects in Mindanao, joining the long list of companies exploring opportunities in the brownout-prone island.
Ayala Corp. managing director John Eric Francia told reporters over the weekend the group was “in very advanced stages of development work there.”
“Unfortunately, I cannot disclose at this point but we do have advance projects in Mindanao,” said Francia, who is also the president of AC Energy Holdings Inc., the conglomerate’s power unit.
The Ayala Group is pursuing power generation projects through wholly-owned subsidiary AC Energy.
Francia said the company would continue a strategy of pursuing opportunities through joint ventures with established power players.
“We will not reinvent the wheel. There are a lot of projects there already that have been developed by organizations and if you look at our behavior with our current partnerships, whether it be with Sta. Clara, Trans-Asia, GN Power, these are all established players that we partner with. That will continue to be our strategy,” he said.
Ayala forged a joint venture with Sta. Clara Power Corp. for hydropower projects such as the first in Ifugao province.
“We are working on a pilot project with Sta. Clara Power right now. It’s an 11-MW mini hydro project in Ifugao. It’s already in the final stages, and we are very close to the breaking of ground,” Francia said.
Francia said the Ayala-Sta Clara partnership was looking at about 200 megawatts of total hydro capacity nationwide. Ayala allotted $50 million for such hydro projects, he added.
“In our Sta. Clara portfolio, we have about over 200 MW of total capacity. But having said that, there’s a lot of mini hydros around 10 megawatts. There’s about more than a thousand of them, so what we would like to do is to make sure that we do things right for the first projects,” Francia said.
AC Energy is developing coal projects with Trans-Asia Oil and Energy Development Corp. and GN Power Ltd. The company also teamed up with Northwind Power Development Corp.
Ayala has a partnership with Mitsubishi Corp. for PhilNewEnergy Inc., which is pursuing the construction of solar projects.
“It’s too late in the game to start from scratch so I think that’s an explicit strategy that we’ve taken to look who’s done a lot of the development work already and to partner with them…Since we are here for the long haul, we’ll be originating projects ourselves as we get better at development work. But that’s probably… we’re talking about projects that will come online seven to 10 years from now,” Francia said. source
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