No buyers for Novera

Renewable energy company Novera Energy has polished off its big book of clichés and give its potential suitors the flick this week. After lots of batted eyelashes, sweet words and stolen glances with the likes of 3i subsidiary Harrier Acquisitions and Infinis Acquisitions over a possible takeover, Novera decided it couldn’t stretch the flirting out any longer and made up its mind that the time had to consummate the relationship or walk away.

According to Novera, it set the deadline of yesterday evening for its wooers to, in its words, “put up or shut up”.

5pm on 2 June came and went without any takeover eventuating and now it’s back to business as usual for the unacquired Novera.

And hey, says Novera, it’s doing just fine all on its own. It’s got all this going on:

Novera is in the middle of an important year in its wind development programme. Novera started 2008 with four wind farms in the planning process. One further site has been submitted into planning since the start of the year, bringing the total to five. On 7 May 2008, the first of these, a proposed 40-46MW wind farm at A’Chruach, received unanimous consent from Argyll and Bute Council. The Company anticipates decisions on three of the four sites remaining in planning over the next few months and is confident that the quality of its projects and its planning submissions will result in further consents.

In addition, the Company anticipates submitting a further 8 sites totalling approximately 100MW into planning by the end of 2008, with a further 200MW in 2009. Novera’s success rate in taking proposed sites successfully through planning is excellent and the Board of Novera is confident in delivering or exceeding its target of 250MW into operation by the end of 2011.

Novera is also developing an “energy from waste” business. It has the exclusive UK licence for a proven gasification technology. In East London it has recently signed heads of terms with Shanks for waste derived fuel for a gasification project for which it already has planning consent. Novera has also recently announced that it is developing a series of follow up gasification projects to convert waste to energy.