New €610 million bank facilities have been signed by Ornua in order to support continued dairy industry growth.
These five-year syndicated bank facilities are set to replace the existing €420 million syndicated bank facilities from February 2014.
The new facilities are set to extend to November 2022 and Ornua’s early refinancing of the existing facilities is understood to have taken advantage of positive bank market conditions.
- €260 million committed syndicated Revolving Credit Facility (RCF) (including €60 million of ancillary facilities) to fund Ornua’s own working capital requirements and its international growth strategy;
- €350 million committed syndicated Reverse Invoice Discounting Facility (RID) to fund the working capital requirements of Ornua’s member suppliers, Ireland’s dairy processors.
In addition to this, a further €100 million is available (€50 million under the RCF and €50 million under the RID) – if required – over the course of the five-year period.
The participant banks remain the same as under the previous facilities, these include: Allied Irish Banks; Bank of America Merrill Lynch; Barclays; HSBC; Rabobank; and Ulster Bank.
Commenting on the refinancing, Donal Buggy, group finance director at Ornua, said: “The successful refinancing ensures that Ornua retains access to the banking liquidity it needs to continue implementing our strategic five-year growth plan ‘Ornua 2021’ following the removal of milk quotas in 2015, and delivering strong product price returns for Irish dairy farmers.
Not only does it strengthen our capital structure, but it also provides continued working capital support to our member suppliers and ultimately the dairy community across Ireland.
“It is particularly pleasing that we have retained the same group of Irish and international banking partners, and we note that the deal was significantly over-subscribed demonstrating their continued support for Ornua and the Irish dairy industry.”
Ornua claims to be the largest exporter of Irish dairy products with annualised sales of close to €2 billion across 110 countries. It has also continued to deliver strong growth in international markets in 2017 across its Ornua Foods and Ornua Ingredients divisions.