Parkland Corporation announced that it secured up to CA$210 million of financing from Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) to support the company’s continued multiyear growth of its electric vehicle (EV) network.
Parkland’s existing EV charging network is primarily located in British Columbia (BC), which has the highest proportion of EV drivers in North America. Parkland has 37 locations already operational with EV charging and is on track to have 50 in operation by early 2024.
“Our initial investments in EV charging have been positive,” said Darren Smart, SVP energy transition and corporate development. “Strong customer utilization has validated our strategy to build scale in markets with tangible demand and has confirmed our belief that a high-quality customer experience matters.”
Smart added, “I want to compliment the CIB on their financing model, which helps incentivize and de-risk investments in EV charging. We will be strategic in deploying this financing to expand our charging network, while also exploring additional third-party capital opportunities to fund our own and potential third-party sites.”
“By investing in charging infrastructure, we can support EV adoption and help to significantly reduce transportation sector greenhouse gas emissions. Our financing agreement with Parkland paves the way for up to 2,000 public fast charging ports to come online across Canada,” said Ehren Cory, CEO, Canada Infrastructure Bank. “Since the launch of our Charging and Hydrogen Refueling Infrastructure initiative, we moved quickly to collaborate with the private sector and are nearing our initial investment target of $500 million. As part of the increased sector target for Green Infrastructure, which is now $10 billion, we will continue to meet the strong market demand for this initiative and expand the availability of charging infrastructure.”
CIB has provided an 18-year financing facility on attractive financial terms, including principal repayments which are tied to utilization of the installed EV chargers. CIB will fund up to 80% of capital deployed to install the chargers over four years, significantly de-risking the expansion of Parkland’s EV charging network. Parkland has created a specific project finance entity for this CIB financing, which is non-recourse to Parkland.
In other EV charging news, Texas-based Buc-ee’s and Mercedes-Benz HPC North America announced a new strategic agreement recently. The car brand has partnered with the c-store to build charging hubs at most Buc-ee’s travel centers, starting with about 30 by the end of 2024.