Shares surge on Aggreko £97m deal in Bangladesh

Published on Tuesday 20 April 2010 21:03

SHARES in Aggreko, the Glasgow-based temporary power supplier, surged ahead yesterday after it announced a £97 million three-year deal in Bangladesh.

The agreement with the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) will see Aggreko supply 200 megawatts of power to help the country tackle power shortages caused by increasing demand for electricity from domestic and industrial consumers.

Although the government has embarked on an ambitious programme to increase the capacity of its national grid, power demand is exceeding supply.

The award of the contract is in addition to the 40MW that Aggreko has been operating since October 2008 at a plant near Khulna in the south-west of the country.

Under the new contract, Aggreko will provide power plants to BPDB, which will feed power directly into substations connected to the grid.

All aspects of the power plants, from design, mobilisation and commissioning to operation and maintenance, will be handled by Aggreko. The first tranche of power will be operational on 1 July, with the entire project scheduled to be commissioned in August.

Rupert Soames, chief executive of Aggreko, said: "Building upon our previous successful performance in Bangladesh, I am very pleased that Aggreko will expand its relationship with BPDB.

"Ensuring that industrial, agricultural and domestic users have a reliable power supply is vital to any economy, which is why Aggreko's fast-track power provision is an excellent solution."

Shares in Aggreko rose by 35p, or 3 per cent, to close at 1,189p, giving the FTSE-100 company a market value of about 3.3 billion.