Adani Enterprises secures ₹10,238 cr financing for Ganga expressway

Adani Enterprises Ltd, the flagship company of Adani Group, has secured ₹10,238 crore debt financing for the Ganga expressway projects from India's largest public sector lender, the State Bank of India.

Three wholly-owned subsidiaries of Adani Enterprises – Budaun Hardoi Road Private Ltd (BHRPL), Hardoi Unnao Road Private Ltd (HURPL) and Unnao Prayagraj Road Private Ltd (UPRPL) – have achieved financial closure for the access-controlled six lane greenfield Ganga expressway project, the Gautan Adani-led company says in an exchange filing.

The three subsidiaries have entered into a concession agreement with Uttar Pradesh Expressway Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA). The concession period is 30 years.

The Ganga expressway in Uttar Pradesh, which will connect Meerut with Prayagraj, will be India's longest expressway to be implemented on a toll basis. Of its 594-km length, the Adani group will build 464 km from Budaun to Prayagraj, which comprises 80% of the expressway project.

"The State Bank of India has underwritten the entire debt requirement of INR 10,238 Crore for the Ganga Expressway Projects (BHRPL, HURPL & UPRPL). With this facility from the SBI, we have moved a step closer to providing our country and the state of UP with another landmark infrastructure," says KP Maheshwari, chief executive officer, Road Business, Adani Enterprises.

Adani Enterprises' road portfolio has grown to 18 projects, with more than 6,400 lane kilometres and an asset value exceeding ₹44,000 crore spread over ten states in India – Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Gujarat, West Bengal and Odisha. The portfolio has a mix of HAM (hybrid annuity model), TOT (toll-operate-transfer) and BOT (build-operate-transfer) type assets.

Meanwhile, Adani Group's renewable energy arm Adani Green Energy has commissioned a 600 megawatt co-located wind-solar hybrid power plant in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. The plant has power purchase agreements (PPA) with Solar Energy Corporation of India at ₹2.69/kwh for 25 years.

The hybrid power plant consists of 600 MW solar and around 150 MW wind plants.

With the successful commissioning of this 600 MW plant, Adani Green Energy now has a total operational generation capacity of around 6.7 gigawatt, including operational hybrid power generation capacity of around 1 GW, the largest in the world. This puts AGEL's total renewable portfolio of around 20.4 GW well on track to reach its vision of 45 GW capacity by 2030.

Gautam Adani said earlier this week that his conglomerate will invest over $100 billion of capital in the next decade out of which $70 billion will be in an integrated green hydrogen-based value chain. "We have earmarked 70% of this investment for the energy transition space," Adani said at the Forbes Global CEO Conference 2022 in Singapore.