Albatros Mali Energy S.A

Mazars’ transaction modelling supported this award-winning African thermal IPP project throughout the negotiation and financial close phases, and following completion we have provided the operational modelling that is used by the project company to report to all stakeholders.

Client background

The Albatros Energy Mali Independent Power Project involved the design, development, and operations of a 90MW heavy fuel oil thermal power station located in Kayes, Western Mali. The project reached financial close in July 2017 and was the first IPP in Mali.  When completed on time and on budget in October 2018, the project added 25% to the then current base-load power of Mali, creating enough electricity supply for circa 780,000 households. The project was named as Deal of the Year at the Africa Utility Week in May 2018.

Our Role

Mazars was originally engaged by the project sponsors (BWSC, AIIM, Redox Power Solutions and the Investment Fund for Developing Countries) to develop the project financial model and provide transaction modelling services through to financial close, incorporating multi-tranche DFI project loans, and full modelling functionality in respect of thermal power generation and capacity payment / variable

+ fuel charge payment mechanisms in a West African context including F CFA currency and OHADA accounting.

Following COD, the Project Company re-engaged Mazars to develop the operational project financial model to enable monitoring and financial reporting of the operational project to stakeholders on a monthly (shareholders) and semi-annual (lenders) basis.

At both stages, the Mazars team interacted extensively with the client team to ensure the underlying technology / sectoral, financing and jurisdictional were fully reflected in the Model, with the model being user-friendly and readily adopted by the client team.

Project outcomes

• A financial close model that was used by all parties in the updating and finalisation of the project financing, could be used by stakeholders in their scenario and sensitivity analyses and credit / investment committee presentations, and which proved robust when independently audited;
• an enhanced operational financial model using Corality Financial Modelling to deliver a best practice and standardised model that is easy to use and update, with ready link to source management information, and allows for fast sensitivities analysis;
• The operational model had the ability to easily conduct variance analysis between versions of the model (i.e. Forecast versus Budget or original Project model); and
• Thorough hand over process to demonstrate model features, enabling the Project Company’s finance team to confidently use the function to and how to use the model.