Finnish state-owned financing company Finnvera is set to provide £100M in financing for the construction of the MGT Teesside biomass plant in the UK.

The facility — estimated to cost about £650M — will be constructed near the town of Middlesborough, England.

The 299MW power plant — expected to be the world’s largest power plant solely operated by biomass — will be fuelled by clean wood pellets and chips.

Amec Foster Wheeler Energia will deliver the circulating fluidised bed boiler and the flue gas cleaning system for the plant.

According to Jaakko Riiali, Amec Foster Wheeler Energia vice president of commercial operations, the project is a good bridgehead for large biomass boilers of the power company class in Central Europe. In addition, the project serves as an example for more northern countries as well, showing that biomass as well as fossil fuels can be used to fuel large baseload plants.

Riiali said: “Finnvera’s inclusion in the financial arrangements gave stability to the negotiations and made it considerably easier to reach an agreement on project financing.”

Preliminary construction on the plant will commence within the next few months and commercial operations are scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2020.

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