Quinlan Private, the Irish property investment consortium, is moving to acquire a German waste-to-energy company bought by Treasury Holdings in 2003. The German firm is in liquidation.
Quinlan announced a joint investment venture with Treasury last year, but is now understood to be seeking other partners to buy Herhof, the troubled German company.
"The thinking would be that the liquidation has to run its course," said a spokesman for Quinlan Private yesterday. "We do regard it as an attractive investment (but) with a cleaner corporate structure ... and not as things currently stand."
Quinlan is seeking a €100 million investment from the Royal Bank of Scotland and, in addition, an industry partner.
Herhof's future is being watched closely in Germany, as it is contracted to collect and treat the waste of half a million people in Hesse from June.
Treasury Holdings bought Herhof for €20 million in 2003 from the company founder, Mr Hermann Hoffmann.
He had developed a method of treating waste to produce a high-energy "dry stabilitate" which could be later sold as fuel .
However the market for the "stabilitate" did not develop as planned and Mr Hoffmann's medium-sized business ran into financial problems. Treasury stepped in and construction work began in Hesse last June on a waste treatment plant worth €35 million.
Last year, however, Herhof began experiencing financial difficulties and in November Treasury announced a "joint venture" with Quinlan worth €300 million.
However, according to German sources, Treasury did not invest as much as it turned out the company needed.
Herhof's managing director said last week that Quinlan was ready to invest €50 million to save the company, but the funding did not materialise and Herhof went into liquidation on Monday.
"I feel badly deceived," said Mr Fritz Kramer, local authority head in the city of Fulda, to the local Fuldaer Zeitung newspaper. "Because Treasury promised us to complete the construction of the facility with its own money if necessary."
Officials from the local authorities and the Hesse state government will meet the court-appointed administrator today.
Mr Bernd Ache, the administrator, said yesterday that Treasury had a financial plan to transfer a specified amount of money to Herhof every year. They didn't make a payment at the end of 2004 and "nobody knows why", he said.
A spokesman for Treasury Holdings was unavailable for comment yesterday.
