Aboitiz group to spend P59B on ’13 expansion

Aboitiz Equity Ventures will invest its P59 billion capital expenditures (capex) to finance the expansion of all its business units this year.

Majority of their investments will go to their power business which they have allocated P27 billion of the P59 billion capex

“That is part of the P125 billion investment to build new power plants over the next five years that will bring our attributable capacity to roughly 3,500 megawatts (MW), 50 percent more than what we have today,” said AEV president and chief operations officer Erramon Aboitiz.

Aboitiz said the firm was building a 300 MW capacity power plant in Davao, which was expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2015.

“For this, the total investment is over P700 million. We target to have the plant fully commissioned by fourth quarter of 2015,” he said.

CEBU

To support Cebu’s robust economic growth, Aboitiz Power is also set to build another coal-fired power plant in Toledo City within the year.

“This will be a 300 MW power plant which we’ll hopefully start constructing by end of this year and completed by beginning of 2017 or end of 2016,” said Aboitiz.

The plant will be located about five to six kilometers from their Cebu Energy Development Corp plant also in Toledo.

“This used to be a cement plant of Southern Cross that didn’t push through and we bought the property in 2011. We have estimated the investment at $2.5 million per megawatt or roughly about $750 million for the whole plant,” he said.

As part of AEV’s effort to augment earnings and the growth potential of its core businesses, Aboitiz said they were looking at other investment opportunities that could grow into sizable businesses.

Partnerships

Aboitizland has partnered with Ayala for more real estate projects including residential and industrial zone businesses.

Andoni F. Aboitiz, Aboitizland president and CEO, said they were finalizing their agreement with Ayala and undergoing due diligence as to which projects they would be doing in partnership with Ayala.

AEV is also partnering with GazAsia Ltd, a United Kingdom company, to build and operate plants to produce liquid bio-methane fuel from organic waste to replace oil used in transportation.

Aboitiz said that they will be investing $150 million over the next five years to build the plants.

“We have a few options, we are looking at Cebu, Mindanao and Luzon areas on where to build the plant,” he said.

In 2012, AEV booked consolidated revenues of close to P81 billion which is 13 percent higher than the previous year.

The power group still had the biggest share contributing to P18.8 billion, a 14 percent increase from that of 2011.

The banking units turned in P3.9 billion, while the food group contributed P1.3 billion.