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Humour me Bratty - what was the guy in the treasury dept's name? Well first name would be good enough.

You're right in that the off-takes will be a condition precedent to financial close on the debt. The terms of the off-takes are unlikely what SXX would have wanted if they didn't have to structure them for the debt (ie if they were aiming to maximise cash sales values, they wouldn't necessarily sign those contracts as there will be terms they won't like but the lenders demand), so they won't want to sign them until the same point as the debt is guaranteed to be there. So everyone jumps together.

Thanks Stokey12 re details of guarantee. With these guarantees (and the lenders who will be stumping up the cash), they won't take much market risk, if any at all. What that typically means is you have to have sufficient LT off-take contracts to cover the debt being guaranteed. I'm guessing there might be some political sway that pushes this towards the lower end of the what's required, but it still typically is most if not all of the debt balance that needs to be supported. I would expect a lot more announcements of off-take contracts before we hear anything official on the guarantee.

First time poster. Does anyone know the specific govt guarantee being sought? The govt doesn't just hand them out. I may be wrong, but what I suspect it will relate to is a guarantee provided by UK Export Finance based on (to be signed by fin close) off-take arrangements to buyers outside of the UK. This will be wrapped up as part of a project finance and the guarantee is used to get bank funding (as a portion of the debt is guaranteed by govt). In all of these PFs independent technical and commercial reports have to be obtained and provided to the lenders (and UKEF in this instance) and are used in their internal credit applications. The only people who will pay for these reports is the (potential) borrower, ie that's typical. Yes you can suggest that they may have some ability to impact the slant of the report but each process is managed differently. Sometimes the borrower doesn't even get to see the report before it's released. These reports aren't typically public though. I'm curious as to whether the Quod report is done as part of their role as an adviser on the lenders side of the table for the stage 2 financing, or whether indeed, it's completely done by SXX for their own marketing and lobbying.