Essar Oil UK, which owns and operates the Stanlow Refinery in Ellesmere Port, today announced it had agreed new long term working capital facilities, having entered into arrangements for both Inventory Monetisation and Receivables Securitisation.
The Inventory Monetisation arrangement with J. Aron & Company covers the supply of crude oil to Stanlow and replaces a similar agreement with Barclays Bank Plc, who are exiting the global commodities business.
Under the new five year deal, J. Aron will provide inventory management services in relation to approximately 5.8 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products at Stanlow. Management of customer relationships and of product sales processes remain with Essar Oil UK.
In addition, a previous invoice discounting receivables financing arrangement has been replaced with a new three year £300m ($475m equiv.) Receivables Securitisation arranged by Lloyds Bank Plc.
Essar Oil UK Chief Finance Officer, Sampath P, commented: “I’m delighted we have the funding in place to plan for the long term growth of our business. The arrangements give both operational and planning flexibility and will help us continue to deliver an excellent level of service to our customers.”
Volker Schultz, Essar Oil UK Chief Executive said: “I’d like to thank Barclays and ICICI for their support over the last few years and warmly welcome J. Aron and Lloyds as our new banking partners. We can now look ahead with renewed confidence. Stanlow is running very successfully and competitively as a single train highly optimised refinery, while ongoing projects to further improve margins will see us making further significant investment to unlock even greater value.”
