Guayaquil Acces Channel

Ecuador

Project Description

The tender value was over USD 0.5B for a 25-year PPP concession.

The project was tendered between 2016 and 2018. The project involved the deepening of the access channel to the Guayaquil port terminals, including its maintenance and operation under a financing, build, operate and transfer scheme. The project was the largest concession tender of its kind in the Latin American continent.

The Guayaquil Access Channel Concession project aimed to finance, build, operate, and transfer the access channel of the Port of Guayaquil, a major port on the West Coast of South America that handles over 17 million tons of cargo per year. The project's main objective was to estimate future port traffic and determine the value of the tariff for ships entering the access channel.

One of the biggest challenges of the project was the six-month period between the publication of the tender and the tender offer. During this period, Inframara had to build the financial concession model and obtain

Financial Management

The financial management consisted out of:

Investment Research as the pricing model relied on the expected traffic of ships
Advanced Financial Modelling in co-operation with Banco Santander
Project Finance Structuring
Tax Structuring
Currency, Fuel and Inflation Risk Mitigation
Opportunity and Risk Management
Joint Venture Management together with another dredging group and various local partners
Bank Due Diligence
Legal Compliance

financing. Inframara used the Santander Financial Model Guide framework to design and build the project's financial model. The model had to apply the tariff mechanism for the 25-year concession and cover both the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) and the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) costs.

Another significant challenge was working out financing solutions for the project. Inframara had to explore various options such as non-recourse financing provided by financial institutions, the involvement of Multilateral Institutions, and Export Credit Agencies (ECA) in the financing structure.

Applied Services

Tender Management
Project Finance Advisory
Risk Management
Collaborative Coaching

Inframara's Involvement

Inframara played a critical role in the Guayaquil Access Channel Concession project. Our representative acted as the Finance Director for the concession consortium, managing collaboration between internal engineering, concession, and area departments, as well as external parties such as Banco Santander and potential lenders. Inframara's involvement included: