Greece-based battery manufacturer Sunlight Group has secured a €140 million (US$136 million) loan for its manufacturing and R&D investments.
The €140 million syndicated bond loan is made up of €87.5 million in Recovery and Resilience Facility funds, the EU-wide programme to mitigate the negative effects of the Covid pandemics and €52.5 million from Piraeus Bank and Eurobank.
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Piraeus acted as bondholder and arranger for the financing. The remaining 20% of Sunlight’s €175 million needed for the investment project, amounting to €35 million, will be provided by its own funds.
Its project, for which the funding is being provided, is titled ‘Extension and modernization of the existing production capacity’. It said this project pertains to building new energy-efficient buildings, adding state-of-the-art mechanical equipment, and automating its production processes.
More specifically, as Energy-Storage.news recently reported, Sunlight is upgrading its production and assembly lines in facilities in Xanthi (Greece), Verona (Italy), and North Carolina (US) to produce lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries and energy storage systems.
Lampros Bisalas, CEO of Sunlight Group, said: “Funding from the European Recovery and Resilience Facility and the Greek banks acknowledges the effort of our long-term strategy in energy storage. We aim at top-notch innovation and vertical production of lithium technology in Greece, which will supply the global market while also creating value domestically.”
Sunlight Group’s main existing products are batteries for motive power (machinery), reserve power and advanced technology applications like submarines and torpedos. It had an annualised production capacity by end-2021 of 3.6 million motive power cells and 150,000 energy storage cells. Sales in 2021 reached €271.9 million, up by 54%, with EBITDA up 25% to €24.1 million.