Quebec donates money to Orbite / Investissement Québec: «La priorité sera le développement économiqu

The Quebec government is giving $2 million to promote high-purity alumina production technology, which has been sheltered from creditors for almost two years.

The loan is an interim financing to implement the corrective essential to the restart of its high-purity alumina plant in Cap-Chat, reads the government decree published last month.

Orbite is a former shooting star on the stock exchange that promised its shareholders a great deal of money before protecting itself from its creditors on April 3, 2017. At the time, the Quebec government had swallowed up $ 22 million in society. $ 15 million in share capital, $ 5 million in debentures and $ 2 million in loans from the Ministry of the Economy. The federal government had a loan of $ 4.56 million. In total, Orbite owed 43 million to 300 creditors, recalled Le Soleil last October.

The construction of the Gaspé plant has experienced delays and cost overruns that amounted to 130 million, according to Le Soleil.

"Why are we investing? Asked Minister of the Economy Pierre Fitzgibbon in a scrum yesterday. "It's because a supplier has put more money than us. When we have a strategic partner who is ready to hand over some 8 million or 9 million dollars, and who believes in the project, we will follow. Our $ 2 million will be well positioned. "

Strategic partnership

In fact, the strategic partner is the Finnish company Outotec, which supplied the faulty calcination equipment. Orbite, moreover, considered problem equipment to be the main cause of its sheltering creditors in 2017. In exchange for Outotec's money, Orbite put an end to its claims at the time. place of its supplier.

Orbite's cash flow forecast indicates that it will have burned the government's $ 2 million by the end of June.

"There can be no assurance that the Company will succeed in its restructuring efforts or emerging from the protection of the CCAA [Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act]," writes Orbite in all of its communications.