Methanol Hold­ings (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed (MHTL), a mem­ber of the Pro­man Group of Com­pa­nies, yes­ter­day an­nounced the com­ple­tion of a TT $1 bil­lion term fa­cil­i­ty. The term fa­cil­i­ty bears in­ter­est at a rate of 5.50 per cent per an­num for the first 18 months, a state­ment from the com­pa­ny said.

It added that the term fa­cil­i­ty has a tenure of three years and is un­se­cured with in­ter­est payable se­mi-an­nu­al­ly.

The lead arrangers for this TT$1 bil­lion term fa­cil­i­ty are ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd, Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd and Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd.

The com­pa­ny said the in­au­gur­al TT$1 bil­lion debt is­suance was over­sub­scribed and based on strong lo­cal re­verse in­quiries from a com­bi­na­tion of lo­cal banks, glob­al banks rep­re­sent­ed do­mes­tic and lo­cal as­set man­agers.

The pro­ceeds of the fi­nanc­ing will serve the work­ing cap­i­tal and ex­pens­es of the MHTL fa­cil­i­ties in the do­mes­tic Trinida­di­an cur­ren­cy, the com­pa­ny said.

Nel­lo Ramkissoon, Fi­nance Di­rec­tor of MHTL said, “We are ex­treme­ly pleased to have se­cured this new term fa­cil­i­ty.

“Sev­er­al lead­ing banks and as­set man­agers have ap­proached us to is­sue lo­cal debt to serve our op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es and we are over­whelmed by the de­mand and the trust that they have demon­strat­ed in our com­pa­ny and op­er­a­tions.”

He said the lev­el of in­ter­est se­cured by the com­pa­ny is a tes­ta­ment to the strength of MHTL’s rep­u­ta­tion in T&T and glob­al­ly as a leader in the methanol in­dus­try.

Act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive of MHTL and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Pro­man Trinidad Claus Cron­berg­er said, “With this in­au­gur­al lo­cal Trinida­di­an debt is­suance we have fur­ther so­lid­i­fied Pro­man’s po­si­tion as one of the pre­mier en­er­gy com­pa­nies in T&T with strong lo­cal in­ter­ests.

“MHTL con­tin­ues to be the core op­er­a­tional as­set for the Pro­man fam­i­ly of com­pa­nies and we re­main fo­cused on de­liv­er­ing world class methanol and fer­tilis­er prod­ucts from our di­ver­si­fied as­set base in the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate where we re­main a sig­nif­i­cant em­ploy­er of lo­cal tal­ent with over 1,500 lo­cal em­ploy­ees,” Cron­berg­er added.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd Gre­go­ry Hill, de­scribed the move as a land­mark en­er­gy sec­tor trans­ac­tion which demon­strat­ed the on-go­ing growth and de­vel­op­ment of its cap­i­tal mar­kets.

“It af­ford­ed MHTL and Pro­man the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­crease its lo­cal con­tent now via the do­mes­tic fi­nan­cial and cap­i­tal mar­kets,” he added.

MHTL is one of the largest methanol pro­duc­ers in the world with a to­tal ca­pac­i­ty of over four mil­lion met­ric tons an­nu­al­ly and 1.5 mil­lion met­ric tonnes of fer­tilis­er prod­ucts, from its five methanol plants lo­cat­ed at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

The com­pa­ny is the largest sup­pli­er of methanol to North Amer­i­ca and is al­so a sig­nif­i­cant sup­pli­er to the Eu­ro­pean Mar­ket.