Member Article

Peel Ports secures £152.5m refinancing package

Peel Ports group, which owns both the Port of Liverpool and the Manchester Ship Canal, has completed a major refinancing.

Three specialist infrastructure investors – Westbourne, IFM and AXA – have been involved in the process, which allows the group to refinance £152.5m of debt. The deal follows a £1.6bn financing package the group concluded last December.

Graeme Charnock, chief financial officer at Peel Ports, confirmed that the group had made an “opportunistic approach” to the debts market and that it was “delighted at the response.”

He said: The new funding further diversifies the investor base at the same time as extending the maturity profile of our debt.“

That debt is comprised of eight-year loans and refinances some of the three-year debt the group took on in December last year.

Mr Charnock added that the deal showed wider confidence in the group’s plans, which include the £350m Liverpool2 development.

This project will enable the container handling capacity at the Port of Liverpool to be doubled from 750,000 teu to 1.5million teu per annum.

Due to open in 2015, Liverpool2 will see the world’s biggest container ships docking directly at the Port of Liverpool. The deep-water hub will attract vessels to a distribution hub centrally located for the whole of the UK, with a population of 35m consumers within a 150-mile radius.

It will create 408 direct jobs and 4,631 indirect jobs, 3,278 of which will be in Merseyside districts. The indirect jobs are in activities totally dependent on the new port terminal - such as warehousing and HGV driving jobs. It is regarded as a crucial project by local partners in Atlantic Gateway and as part of the Superport partnership.

As well as the Port of Liverpool and the Ship Canal, Peel Ports owns the Medway Ports, Heysham in Lancashire and Clydeport in Scotland.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .