19 March 2007
Excerpts from Business Day

Standard Bank has raised $125-million (N16-billion) of project financing for Nigeria's Eleme Petrochemicals plant, which is majority owned by Indonesia's Indorama Group, the bank said yesterday.

Standard Bank said in a statement the funding, which was raised in the form of senior debt and working capital, would be used to revamp the Eleme Petrochemicals plant in Port Harcourt and bring it to full capacity.

The bank said the Nigerian wing of its Stanbic unit, the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund and Nigerian banks, United Bank for Africa and Fidelity Bank, also participated in the fund raising. Standard Bank of South Africa will also act as commercial bank agent, with Stanbic Bank Nigeria acting as agent for the working capital tranche, and as security trustee, it said.

The International Finance Corporation, the World Bank's investment arm, said last month it would invest $155-million (N19.6-billion) in Eleme to return the plant to profit.

The transaction was the IFC's largest sub-Saharan African privatisation investment so far, the agency said.

Indorama Group bought a 75 per cent stake in newly privatised Eleme complex near Port Harcourt in December 2005 and assumed management last May.

The Eleme plant has a design capacity of 300,000 tonnes per year of olefins, which are used as building blocks in the plastics industry, and 250,000 tonnes of polyethylene, a basic plastic.