Azteq’s bankruptcy and its consequences
The Belgian project developer Azteq stopped its business in mid December. It is currently under the insolvency administration of Mark Bernaerts from the company Consenso Advocaten. The bankruptcy came just two months after the official launch of the 18 MW solar industrial heat plant at the Mars Petcare factory in Australia, which was contracted to Azteq. The company was founded in 2017 by Koen Vermout, Kari Ven and Peter Vandeurzen. It specialized in signing solar heat purchase agreements with industrial clients. The company financed its startup phase with loans from the Belgian bank KBC, crowd funding and a shareholding of the Port of Antwerp-Bruges, where one of the first solar industrial heat plants was commissioned in 2019 (see photo).
Photo: Azteq
The actual final trigger for the bankruptcy according to Bernaerts was the fact that the house bank KBC cancelled one of the loans because they lost confidence in the development of Azteq’s business. But multiple factors contributed to the situation. Azteq was, for example, not successful in obtaining bank guarantees for the large investments associated with the contract with Mars Petcare in Australia. The USD 25.2 million project was already being executed based on a turnkey delivery contract between Azteq and Mars Petcare. The customer insisted on bank guarantees to finance the first instalment, which Azteq was not able to deliver.
Special purpose vehicle – independent legal entities
Azteq’s business model involved concluding heat supply contracts with industrial customers. In most cases, Azteq set up Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) for the financing, construction and operation of the solar process heat plants. This is now a great advantage in the insolvency because the SPVs are independent entities, although Azteq was the sole shareholder in most of the SPVs.
“Our first focus in this bankruptcy was to sell Azteq’s key assets to facilitate a possible restart. We successfully negotiated a deal involving the sale of a substantial part of Azteq’s assets, including the transfer of shares in certain SPVs which will hopefully makes it possible for them to continue their operations and fulfil their obligations despite the insolvency”, reported Bernaerts. This also applies to the 30 MW plant at Heineken in Spain, where Engie España has shares in the SPV and operates the process heat plant as an ESCO. “The transaction, which encompassed the transfer of key assets, goodwill, know-how, and some of the SPVs shares, maximized value for the creditors,” added Bernaerts.
The administrator does not see a big chance of restructuring Azteq out of the administration as there are not many assets left and the debts are high. But he has already taken note of the fact that “insiders behind Azteq are engaged and have bought shares in the SPVs”. There may therefore be the possibility of founding a new company that utilises the extensive project experience and promising leads. The author of this news article is pretty sure that there will be news about a reborn Azteq soon on solarthermalworld.org.
Financial deal for Solarlite failed
When the insolvency was announced in December, Azteq had no permanent employees, only freelancers. However, there was a team at the German subsidiary Solarlite that was responsible for engineering for the Azteq projects. Solarlite was acquired by Azteq in 2020. The founder of Solarlite, Dr Joachim Krüger, became General Director of the subsidiary back then.
Solarlite was inevitably affected by the insolvency of its shareholder. The only viable solution for Solarlite according to Bernaerts was to find a new investor to take over Azteq’s shares. “Unfortunately, despite all efforts and negotiations with potential candidates, we were unable to secure a new shareholder or investor. As a result, the directors of Solarlite filed for bankruptcy at the 31st of January”, reported the administrator. Further negotiations regarding an investor for Solarlite will start again as soon as the insolvency process in Germany has started.
Websites of organizations mentioned in this news article:
Azteq: https://azteq.be/
Solarlite: https://www.solarlite.de/en/
Mars Petcare: https://www.mars.com/
Consenso Advocaten: https://www.consenso.be/
