KUALA LUMPUR (July 1): Toyo Ventures Holdings Bhd (TVHB) (KL:TOYOVEN) said it has postponed the commencement of engineering, procurement, commissioning and construction (EPCC) works for its thermal power plant project in Vietnam by up to six months.

In a filing with Bursa Malaysia on Monday, Toyo said it had entered into a second addendum to the EPCC contract with Sunway Construction Group Bhd (KL:SUNCON) and Vietnam's Power Engineering Consulting Joint Stock Company 2 (PECC2), which extends the date for the issuance of the notice to proceed (NTP) "to a date on or before Dec 31, 2024, or such other date as the parties may mutually agree upon in writing."

Under the previous addendum to the EPCC contract inked in October last year, the NTP was to have been issued by June 30. The contractor, which is the consortium between Sunway and PECC2, will only commence work once the NTP is issued.

Once the notice is issued, the project is scheduled to be completed in four and a half years. The initial EPCC contract, worth US$2.42 billion (RM11.41 billion), was signed in March 2023.

SunCon in May revealed that EPCC works for the 2.12-gigawatt (GW) Song Hau 2 power plant project in Vietnam's Hau Giang province had yet to begin because the consortium was waiting for the project’s build-operate-transfer firm Song Hau 2 Power Co Ltd (SH2P), a wholly-owned unit of Toyo, to issue the NTP.

The disclosure was in response to an article in the May 13-19, 2024 edition of The Edge Malaysia weekly which reported that Toyo was finding difficulty to secure sufficient financing for the project in time before the deadline.

The project’s exclusive mandated lead arranger, Export-Import Bank of Malaysia Bhd, which was appointed in November 2023, was to arrange the proposed syndicated financing facilities of up to US$2.42 billion for the project.

However, Toyo announced last month that SH2P had secured a US$980 million equipment financing facility from i-Power Solutions Pte Ltd to finance up to 70% of the invoice amount for the procurement of equipment required for the EPCC works of the project.

Shares in Toyo ended one sen or 0.71% higher at RM1.42 on Monday, valuing the company at RM188.72 million. Meanwhile, SunCon closed 11 sen or 2.9% higher at RM3.90, giving the construction firm a market capitalisation of RM5.04 billion.