Independent Feasibility Studies for EXIM Bank Manufacturing Financing

Wert-Berater, Inc. prepares the independent feasibility study, market study, business plan and linked financial model that a U.S. manufacturer or project sponsor submits in support of an application to the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM). We are engaged by manufacturers building or expanding export-oriented plants under the Make More in America Initiative, by sponsors of greenfield and brownfield projects applying through EXIM's Structured and Project Finance Division under Attachment F (Form EIB 95-10f), and by the commercial banks, advisers and law firms structuring those transactions. The work product is a bound narrative report, a fully linked Excel model with no hardcoded values, a documented market and demand analysis, a capital and operating cost review, debt-service and downside sensitivity analysis, a risk register, and an implementation schedule. Fiduciary duty runs to the lender and the reviewing agency, never to the borrower. Our conclusions are not revised under pressure, and no fee of ours is contingent on a favorable finding.

Does EXIM require an independent feasibility study?

That distinction matters, and it is the reason a generic business plan is usually rejected on the first pass. EXIM's project finance approach is explicit that projects are subject to extensive underwriting typical of a large project financing spanning technical, environmental, market, financial, legal and insurance due diligence. The Division has operated since 1993 and has supported more than 83 projects across 36 countries. Applications arrive already carrying the sponsor's own consultants' work; EXIM then engages its own independent engineers, market consultant, insurance advisers and outside legal counsel, at the sponsor's cost, to test that work.

The practical consequence for a sponsor is simple. Your feasibility study will be read adversarially by professionals hired specifically to find the hole in it. It should be built to survive that reading — sourced, reconcilable, and honest about the downside — rather than written to persuade.

What EXIM finances, and where the study fits

EXIM operates two families of transaction that generate feasibility-study work:

• Foreign buyer financing. The traditional export credit agency role: medium- and long-term loans, guarantees and insurance supporting foreign purchases of U.S. goods and services. Support is generally the lesser of 85 percent of the value of eligible goods and services in the U.S. export contract, or 100 percent of the U.S. content in them. In Congressionally defined Transformational Export Areas, EXIM may provide fuller financing where the transaction carries at least 51 percent U.S. content; content of People's Republic of China origin is deemed ineligible in those transactions.
• Domestic manufacturing financing. The Make More in America Initiative opens the same medium- and long-term loans, guarantees and insurance to export-oriented domestic manufacturing projects in the United States. This is the program most U.S. manufacturers reaching us are pursuing, and it substitutes a jobs-based sizing test for the traditional U.S. content requirement.

A third dimension cuts across both: whether the transaction is underwritten on the balance sheet of an existing corporate borrower or as limited-recourse project finance dependent on the project's own future cash flow. That choice determines which attachment governs the filing, how much engineering must exist before you apply, and how deep the feasibility analysis must go. It is worth settling before anyone starts drafting. See EXIM project finance feasibility studies for the criteria EXIM applies to limited-recourse structures.

The work product, in detail

An EXIM-directed engagement at Wert-Berater produces the following. Each element exists because a reviewer will ask for it, and each is prepared so it can be traced back to a source.

• Independent feasibility report — the bound narrative that carries the determination and the evidence behind it.
• Market study — addressable market, competitive supply, pricing evidence, and demand for the plant's specific output rather than for its industry in general.
• Business plan — sponsor and management background, product strategy, commercialization plan, and organizational build-out.
• Manufacturing demand analysis — the bridge between market demand and the production schedule: who buys the output, on what terms, at what price, and with what contractual certainty.
• Production capacity and utilization modeling — nameplate capacity, effective capacity after changeover and downtime, yield assumptions, and the utilization ramp by period.
• CAPEX review — the capital budget tested against comparable facilities, with contingency, owner's costs, and the equipment schedule reconciled to the engineering documents.
• OPEX review — input costs, labor at the required skill level and prevailing wage, utilities, maintenance, quality assurance, logistics and freight.
• Management assessment — the depth and relevant operating experience of the team that will actually run the plant.
• Export-market analysis — destination markets, tariff and registration barriers, distribution route to market, and the evidence supporting the export nexus.
• Financial model — fully linked, no hardcoded values, ten-year pro forma with monthly construction-period detail where the ramp warrants it.
• Debt-service analysis — coverage by period against the proposed amortization, on both a project and a global basis.
• Downside sensitivity — price, volume, input cost, schedule slippage and interest-rate stress, run individually and in combination, with the breakeven identified.
• Risk register — each material risk, its owner, the mitigant, and the residual exposure after the mitigant is applied.
• Implementation schedule — permitting, construction, commissioning, qualification and commercial operation, tied to the drawdown profile.
• Coordination with engineering and environmental specialists — the feasibility study reconciles to the FEED package and the environmental documentation rather than restating them.

EXIM requirement → Wert-Berater deliverable → evidence → responsible professional

The table below maps what EXIM's published guidance and application attachments call for, to the deliverable that answers it, the evidence base behind that deliverable, and the professional responsible for it. Items marked sponsor or third party are not ours to produce; we identify them, reconcile to them, and flag them when they are missing.

Requirements column summarized from EXIM published guidance: Guidelines for Submitting a Successful Project Finance Application, Our Approach to Project Finance, Make More in America Initiative, Application for Long-Term Loan or Guarantee (EIB 95-10) and its attachments, and Economic Impact Procedures. EXIM requirements change; confirm current guidance with EXIM or your lender before relying on any summary, including this one.

Make More in America: the two tests that decide eligibility

MMIA exists because U.S. manufacturers in sectors critical to national security — small and mid-sized firms in particular — struggle to finance the domestic capacity they need to compete for global sales. EXIM assesses project eligibility against its standard due diligence and additionality requirements plus two core criteria:

Export nexus

Eligibility turns on the percentage of production or shipments tied to exports. The required nexus is 15 percent for small businesses, transformational export areas and climate-related transactions, and 25 percent of output exported or expected to be exported for projects in other sectors. Export suppliers can qualify as well where the nexus standards are met. In our experience the phrase that carries the analytical weight is expected to be exported: a projection is acceptable, but it has to be an evidenced projection. That is a feasibility-study question, and it is where a thin application fails.

Jobs

The amount of EXIM financing available to an individual project is scaled to the number of U.S. jobs supported, during construction and over the life of the financing. Each job-year — one job over five years being five job-years — allows for up to $229,502 in financing. For domestic transactions this standard replaces the U.S. content requirement that governs traditional foreign-buyer deals. The practical effect is that your staffing plan and construction labor schedule are not administrative detail; they size the loan.

Separately, for non-project-finance transactions EXIM generally requires a minimum three-year revenue-producing history in the same line of business, proven debt-service capacity, and a loan amount not disproportionate to the size of the company — generally not more than 40 percent of the borrower's tangible net worth. Project finance transactions are assessed under EXIM's project finance approach instead. Read the detail on the MMIA feasibility study page.

Why the sponsor's study and EXIM's consultants are not the same thing

This is the most common misunderstanding we correct in a first call. EXIM retains independent outside legal counsel, independent engineers, insurance advisers and a market consultant to conduct its own due diligence, and those fees are borne by the project sponsors. Sponsors sometimes conclude from this that they need not commission their own analysis, since EXIM will do it anyway.

Where the project has merit, EXIM may issue a Preliminary Project Letter indicating it is prepared to proceed with additional due diligence, generally within 45 days of the commencement of the evaluation, with an indicative financing offer attached. Everything downstream of that letter is negotiation over terms that were set by the quality of the information available at application.

Methodology and independence

Wert-Berater has prepared more than 4,000 feasibility studies since 1998, covering $40.2 billion in evaluated project value across all 50 states. The methodology does not change by program: primary market research, industry production and pricing data, location-adjusted facility cost data, BLS occupational wage data for the staffing model, and RMA and industry operating benchmarks for the ratio analysis. Every model is fully linked with no hardcoded values, so any reviewer can stress any input and watch the coverage move. Sensitivity runs at plus and minus 5, 10 and 15 percent, with interest-rate stress from +0.5 to +3.0 percent.

Independence is the product. Our engagement letter fixes scope, timeline and fee before work begins, and the fee is never contingent on the conclusion. If the numbers do not support the project, the report says so — which is precisely why a lender or an agency reviewer can rely on it.

Relevant experience — stated plainly

We want to be exact about this, because export finance rewards precision and penalizes overstatement. Wert-Berater has not to date completed an engagement financed by EXIM, and we make no claim that EXIM has approved, accepted or reviewed our work. What we bring is directly adjacent and verifiable:

• Export-oriented manufacturing abroad. Manufacturing facility studies across Europe and the Middle East, including Bulgaria, Finland, the Czech Republic, Germany and Saudi Arabia — projects underwritten by parties who had to be convinced that output would sell across borders.
• Large industrial and process projects. Oil and gas refining engagements in Qatar and Dubai, including a 50,000-barrel-per-day refinery and a used-lube-oil re-refinery, and a 150,000-square-foot indoor food production facility in Qatar.
• U.S. manufacturing and processing under federal program review. A long record of SBA 504/7(a) and USDA Business & Industry manufacturing and processing studies prepared to SOP 50 10 8 and RD Instruction 5001 — programs whose reviewers apply the same discipline EXIM applies: documented demand, benchmarked capital cost, stress-tested coverage, and an independent author.
• Client portal. Every engagement is delivered through a secure client portal where the sponsor, lender and advisers work from the same living analysis rather than passing a static PDF between them.

Our studies are prepared to address EXIM's published requirements. Whether a given application succeeds is EXIM's determination, not ours, and no consultant can promise otherwise.

Questions we are asked before an engagement

Who can prepare an EXIM feasibility study?

There is no EXIM roster of approved feasibility consultants to be listed on. What a reviewer weighs is whether the author is genuinely independent, whether the methodology is disclosed, whether assumptions are sourced, and whether the model can be stressed. A study authored by the sponsor's own staff, or by a firm compensated on closing, carries little weight in that reading.

How much does an EXIM feasibility study cost?

We confirm scope, timeline and a fixed fee in writing before work begins, and we will tell you in the first call if the project is not ready for an application. See what drives feasibility study cost.

What is the difference between FEED and a feasibility study?

Can EXIM finance a U.S. manufacturing plant?

How long does a study take?

Start the conversation

Tell us the product, the plant, the destination markets and the financing structure you are contemplating. We will tell you whether an EXIM application is realistic, what evidence you are missing, and what the study will cost — before you commit to anything.