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- Cindrigo has acquired the company Energy Co-invest Global Corp, specialized in geothermal energy
- Energy Co-invest Global Corp does not hold any licenses for geothermal research in Croatia
- Cindrigo attempted to ‘inflate’ its portfolio with projects that may only happen
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Cindrigo has acquired the company Energy Co-invest Global Corp, specialized in geothermal energy, which, among other assets, holds licenses for three geothermal blocks in Croatia, each with a capacity of 20 MW. This was the news recently announced by Cindrigo on the London Stock Exchange, but it seems that the announcement of false information is not reserved only for companies from this region.
Namely, Cindrigo has indeed acquired the company Energy Co-invest Global Corp, but it does not hold any licenses for geothermal research in Croatia. This was confirmed to us by the Ministry of Economy, and to make matters even more incredible, we also received confirmation from Cindrigo itself that they do not have licenses for geothermal research. At least not yet.
– The geothermal blocks in Croatia are owned by Croatian companies, and ECG has negotiated the terms for acquiring a majority stake in them. In the coming weeks, there will be announcements about companies and projects, and we will ensure to share them with you in advance so that you can ask additional questions. Regarding plans, we will start with resource validation and work as soon as we obtain certain permits in the coming months, after which parallel work on design will follow, and then, after obtaining all permits, construction. If all goes well, we could have operational power plants in 2023 – Jordan Oxley, the director of Cindrigo, optimistically responded to us, apparently unconcerned by the fact that he announced about 20 days ago that they already have licenses for three geothermal blocks in Croatia, even though they do not have any.
Full of optimism, Oxley added that Croatia is very attractive to them and that their goal is to have geothermal power plants with a total installed capacity of 100 to 200 MW.
And on Cindrigo’s corporate presentation pages, it is stated that among the active projects of ECG, Cindrigo’s subsidiary, there are three geothermal blocks in Croatia, each of which will have an annual EBITDA of £12 million and that their first Croatian geothermal power plant should be operational in 2023.
However, experts on Croatia’s geothermal potential with whom we spoke say that given the complexity of obtaining permits and the duration of constructing a geothermal power plant, currently no geothermal project is ready to be commissioned in 2023. At the time of writing this text, there is only one hybrid power plant in Croatia that has a permit for exploitation, but its capacity is less than 20 MW. In the most optimistic scenario for the development of a geothermal power plant, at least six years are needed (three years for research plus three years for design, obtaining permits, and construction).
From all of the above, it can be concluded that Cindrigo, for reasons known only to them, decided to ‘inflate‘ their portfolio with projects that may only happen and overly optimistically announced that the first of them would be operational as early as 2023. The reasons for such ‘inflation’ may need to be sought in the company’s announcement that they ‘continue the process that should lead to the submission of a request for re-listing of share capital on the Official List and to trading on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange.’
Due to the dissemination of false information, we also contacted the London Stock Exchange, but they replied that they cannot comment on individual issuers and that trading in that company’s shares has been suspended since August 2020.
