Kangaroo Island Plantation Timbers (KIPT) announced in April that it had agreed to buy a suitable pontoon barge to form the floating berth of its proposed Smith Bay deep-water wharf. Source: Timberbiz
KIPT announced that it has completed the transaction and taken possession of the pontoon, which will be towed to a suitable shipyard for lay-up, reconditioning and refit.
The pontoon was bought from Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd of Ulsan, South Korea with a purchase price of US$2.9 million.
When KIPT agreed to the purchase, it anticipated that development approval for the wharf would have been secured by the time the pontoon settlement was due.
It was anticipated that the pontoon costs would have been financed using the second ($30m) tranche of CBA funding, a construction facility that is activated by development approval. However, there have been delays associated with the determination of the development assessment pathway and release of the guidelines for assessment, coupled with unfavourable weather at Smith Bay that has delayed essential offshore geotech fieldwork, with consequential impacts on the submission of the Environmental Impact Statement.
The net effect is that the pontoon purchase cannot be financed using the CBA construction facility.
KIPT has arranged an unsecured, second-ranking $3 million facility from its major shareholder Samuel Terry Asset Management.
The facility is on arm’s length commercial terms and has enabled the pontoon acquisition to be completed. Had this not been the case, wharf completion might have been further delayed by the need to buy or build a suitable pontoon after development approval.
