The Estonian group Graanul Invest AS subsidiaries have recently acquired the Langerlo NV power plant in Belgium. A new EUR 250 million investment will be made to switch to pellet burning units.
Graanul Invest AS is now the biggest wood pellets producer in Europe.
The Langerlo plant was assigned green certificates as support measure to be able to convert the coal burning units to wood pellet burning units. At the moment, the plant has a 656 MW capacity. Out of this, 86 MW is gas-powered and the rest of 470 MW is coal-powered.
When making the switch and working at full capacity, the plant will use 1.8 million tons of pellets per year, as reported by the Baltic Course.
“I hope that by carrying out this project we are able to prove that sustainable use of biomass is one of the best ways to make use of existing energy infrastructure and a viable and solid alternative to whatever other renewable energy technologies," said Graanul Investboard chairman Raul Kirjanen.
The forestry and energy group AS Graanul Invest will be responsible for converting the Langerlo plant by fall 2018, as to be able to sustain the 8% of the electricity needs of the Flanders region.
The Estonian company will take hold of all the shares from Peter Leibold, former CEO of German Pellets German, but no information about the acquisition price has been offered yet.
Last year, Eon, the former owner of the 556 MW Langerlo coal-fired power plant, proposed to buy it back, but German Pellets went bankrupt. Eon sold the Langerlo plant to German Pellets back in August 2015, but there has been an investigation launched on whether Eon legally sold the plant to German Pellets. The subsidies may be withheld if proven so.