SIMEC Atlantis, the global developer, owner and operator of sustainable energy projects, has seen minimal impact on the business from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whilst the situation across the company’s portfolio of projects requires constant monitoring and reassessment, Atlantis has seen minimal disruption to its tidal business with MeyGen in Scotland continuing to export power to the grid.
In addition, the company expects that it will be able to maintain current contractual commitments to deliver equipment and services to clients in Japan and Scotland this year.
The Green Highland Renewables (GHR) business has 45 contracts with operating hydro schemes that require constant monitoring from the operations centre in Scotland. A reduced team of engineers will be maintained to enable Atlantis to provide essential services to all of its customers and this will continue unaffected throughout this period.
GHR has three hydro projects under construction which have been temporarily shut down in line with current government policies.
Uskmouth Power Station conversion project work programmes are under review as the company adapts to the constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing workplace disruption.
Given this backdrop, it is reasonable to expect some delay to the target financial close date which was previously set as Q3 2020 for the project; however, essential project development works are continuing in order to minimize any delay, Atlantis explained.
In addition, the combustion system design contract awarded to Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Europe GmbH in October 2019, is ongoing and at this stage remains on-schedule to be completed this summer. The application for the conversion’s permit variation for the new fuel was submitted to Natural Resource Wales in December 2019 and is now open for public consultation.
The Uskmouth site has a live 132kV banking station along with the station’s 393MW of generating station assets (220MW of which will be converted as part of the planned Conversion project).
To support the Company and preserve liquidity through the current period of uncertainty, the chairman and all non-executive directors will take a 20% cut in their fees and will defer payment of the remaining fees with immediate effect and the chief executive officer and executive team will take a 20% salary deferral. Management are also actively implementing additional cost saving measures across business including further reductions in project, overhead and people costs in order to preserve cash and provide the business with maximum flexibility.
