Independent feasibility studies and fully linked financial models for limited-recourse project finance, prepared to address EXIM's Structured and Project Finance criteria under Attachment F. Built to be read adversarially by an independent engineer, a market consultant and a credit officer.
In limited-recourse project finance, the lender is repaid from one source: the cash the project itself generates. There is no parent balance sheet standing behind the debt in the ordinary case, so the credit case is only as strong as the evidence behind each input to that cash flow. That is the whole discipline of an EXIM project finance feasibility study. Wert-Berater, Inc. prepares the independent feasibility report, market study and fully linked financial model that a sponsor submits through EXIM's Structured and Project Finance (P&SF) Division under Attachment F (Form EIB 95-10f). Our work reconciles to the front-end engineering and design (FEED) and the environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) produced by other professionals, and it tests every revenue, cost, contract and schedule assumption against a source a reviewer can check. Fiduciary duty runs to the lender and the reviewing agency. No conclusion of ours is revised under pressure, and no fee is contingent on a favorable finding.
In a corporate loan, a lender can fall back on an established borrower's other assets if a single project underperforms. In limited-recourse project finance that fallback is largely absent by design: the sponsor commits substantial equity and defined undertakings, and beyond those the risk sits with the project. The analytical burden therefore shifts almost entirely onto the projected cash flow and the contracts that produce it. A number in the model that cannot be traced to a contract, a quotation, a market study or a benchmark is an unsupported assumption — and here an unsupported assumption is a defect.
EXIM's P&SF Division treats these transactions accordingly. Its published approach describes the underwriting as extensive underwriting typical of a large project financing, running across technical, environmental, market, financial, legal and insurance due diligence, and EXIM engages its own independent outside legal counsel, independent engineers, insurance advisers and a market consultant — at the sponsor's cost — to test the sponsor's material. Your feasibility study is not a persuasive brochure for those reviewers; it is the exhibit they will attempt to dismantle, so it must be sourced, internally consistent and honest about the downside. This is the difference between our project finance work and a general corporate study, described on the EXIM feasibility study hub.
EXIM's Structured and Project Finance Division has operated since 1993 and, according to EXIM, has supported more than 83 projects across 36 countries, representing over $37 billion in loans. The practical consequence is that the reviewers on the other side of the table have seen the full range of project structures, offtake arrangements and completion mechanisms, and know what a bankable project looks like. A study built to a general template rather than to the expectations of experienced project finance underwriters is quick for them to set aside.
Below, each Attachment F criterion is stated with what it means analytically and what our study does about it. These criteria are an expectation of EXIM's project finance underwriting approach; the feasibility study itself is not a numbered EXIM form. Attachment F (Form EIB 95-10f) is the Foreign and Domestic Project Finance attachment to the long-term application, not a feasibility-study form — a point many third-party articles get wrong, explained in full on the Attachment F page.
EXIM looks for long-term contracts from creditworthy entities to purchase the project's output and to supply its major inputs — fuel, raw materials and operations and maintenance — extending beyond the term of the requested EXIM financing. Where such contracts are absent, EXIM expects additional equity or credit support to compensate. A contract that expires before the debt does leaves the lender exposed to merchant risk in the tail years, exactly when the project is most leveraged relative to its remaining life. Our study builds a contract-coverage schedule laying each agreement against the amortization profile, identifies where contracted coverage stops short of the debt term, and comments on counterparty creditworthiness using public ratings and financials. Where coverage is short, we model the merchant tail explicitly so the support EXIM will expect is visible rather than buried.
EXIM's preferred construction structure is a lump-sum turnkey engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with a reputable firm, which fixes price and allocates completion and cost-overrun risk to a party equipped to bear it. Where that structure is absent, EXIM looks for sponsor completion undertakings to fill the gap. Our study does not draft the EPC contract, but it reads the construction package to identify which risks are truly transferred and which remain with the project, quantifies the schedule and cost impact of the retained risks, and carries that exposure into the model. A "turnkey" contract with wide exclusions is not a true lump-sum turnkey, and the study says so plainly.
Each risk should sit with the party best able to manage it: construction risk with the contractor, market risk mitigated by offtake, supply risk mitigated by input contracts, operating risk with a qualified operator. Our study produces a risk register naming each material risk, the party to whom it is allocated, the mitigant, and the residual exposure after the mitigant is applied. Its value is that it exposes unallocated risk — risk that has quietly defaulted to the lender because no counterparty was made responsible for it — which is precisely what an EXIM reviewer is hunting for.
EXIM's criterion is that sensitivity analysis must produce a debt-service coverage ratio (DSCR) sufficient to ensure uninterrupted debt servicing for the term of the debt. There is no single published number, because the required floor depends on how volatile the specific project's cash flow is. Our model runs price, volume, input-cost, availability, schedule-slippage and interest-rate stresses individually and in combination, and reports the minimum DSCR by period across the whole term. We answer whether coverage stays above the floor in the downside cases through every year of the debt, and where the breakeven sits. A base-case DSCR that looks comfortable but collapses under a plausible price stress is a finding, and we report it as one.
EXIM expects total project cost to be comparable to projects of similar type and size in that market. A capital budget materially below comparable facilities signals an understated cost that will surface as an overrun; one materially above signals inefficiency or scope creep. Our CAPEX review benchmarks the capital budget against comparable facilities using equipment quotations, EPC pricing and location-adjusted construction cost data, and reconciles it to the independent engineer's estimate. Where our benchmark and the sponsor's budget diverge, we explain the gap rather than paper over it.
Product unit pricing in the model must reflect market-based pricing, not a price chosen to make the coverage work. Our market study assembles pricing evidence — contracted prices where offtake exists, published indices and comparable transactions — and tests whether the price and volume assumptions can actually be realized in the destination markets at the modeled scale. A price that clears a small volume rarely clears the plant's full nameplate output, and the study distinguishes the two.
Where a project earns revenue in one currency but services debt in another, devaluation can erode coverage independently of any operating problem. EXIM expects devaluation risk to be substantially mitigated where applicable, for example through hard-currency revenues. Our study identifies the currency of revenues, costs and debt, flags any mismatch, and tests the coverage under a currency stress so the exposure is quantified rather than assumed away. For a domestic U.S. project earning and borrowing in dollars this criterion may not bind, and we say so.
EXIM expects sponsors to commit substantial equity, with equity arrangements completed prior to submission. Our sources-and-uses statement and finance plan reflect committed equity, evidenced by commitment letters and sponsor balance sheets, and the model draws equity ahead of debt on the schedule EXIM and lenders expect. A finance plan that still shows equity as "to be raised" is not application-ready, and we tell a sponsor that before they file.
The single most important caveat. A limited-recourse structure removes the sponsor's balance sheet as the lender's backstop, which means there is no margin for an unsupported number. Every price, volume, cost, availability and schedule assumption in the model must trace to a contract, a quotation, a market study or a benchmark that an independent reviewer can verify. An assumption that cannot be sourced is treated by EXIM's consultants as a defect, not as conservatism. Build the study to be broken, not to persuade.
EXIM's underwriting runs across six workstreams. The table below shows who leads each, what the sponsor must supply, and what our feasibility study contributes. EXIM engages its own independent engineer, market consultant, insurance adviser and outside counsel, so our study is the sponsor-side document those reviewers test; several workstreams — engineering, environmental, insurance and legal — are led by other professionals whose deliverables our study reconciles to rather than replaces.
| Workstream | Who leads | What the sponsor must supply | What our study contributes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technical | Independent engineer (EXIM's and the sponsor's); EPC contractor | FEED package, technology license, EPC contract, performance guarantees | Reconciliation of the production and utilization model to FEED capacity and yield; flags where the engineering and the cash-flow assumptions diverge |
| Environmental | Environmental and social consultant; EXIM environmental review | Approved ESIA, permits, Environmental Screening Document (Attachment B), agency correspondence | Carries the schedule and cost impact of environmental conditions into the model; does not restate the ESIA |
| Market | Sponsor's consultant (Wert-Berater) and EXIM's market consultant | Offtake contracts, LOIs, distributor agreements, destination-market context | Independent market study: addressable demand, competitive supply, market-based pricing evidence, and the realizability of price and volume at full output |
| Financial | Sponsor's financial adviser; Wert-Berater on the model | Finance plan, equity commitments, sources and uses, proposed amortization | Fully linked financial model, DSCR analysis by period, downside sensitivity suite, breakeven identification |
| Legal | Sponsor's outside counsel; EXIM's outside legal counsel | Project contracts, security package, corporate and permitting documents | Reconciles commercial assumptions to contract terms (tenor, pricing, termination); does not opine on enforceability |
| Insurance | Sponsor's insurance adviser; EXIM's insurance adviser | Construction and operating insurance program, business-interruption cover | Carries insurance cost and any coverage gaps into the operating model and the risk register |
Workstreams and criteria summarized from EXIM published guidance: Our Approach to Project Finance and Guidelines for Submitting a Successful Project Finance Application. EXIM requirements change; confirm current guidance with EXIM or your lender before relying on any summary, including this one.
Submission consists of the standard EXIM long-term application together with an electronic copy of, or access to a data room containing, the Attachment F materials, marked either Foreign Buyer Project Finance Application or Domestic Project Finance Application. The sponsor also provides a preliminary information memorandum (PIM) outlining the key elements of the project; we structure the feasibility study and model so the PIM can draw from them directly rather than being assembled separately.
EXIM conducts a preliminary review within five to ten business days of receipt to decide whether the application contains enough information to proceed to evaluation. An application judged incomplete is returned with an explanation of its deficiencies — which costs the sponsor a cycle. Where the project has merit, EXIM may issue a Preliminary Project Letter (PPL) indicating it is prepared to proceed with further due diligence, accompanied by a financing offer and general terms. EXIM states that the evaluation and PPL issuance are completed within 45 days of the commencement of the evaluation.
The PPL is not the finish line. After it is issued, EXIM negotiates toward a final commitment and may continue using its financial and other consultants until Board authorization and final documentation. Everything downstream of the PPL is negotiation over terms whose starting point was set by the quality of the information filed at application — the strongest argument for a rigorous study: it does not merely get you past the completeness gate, it shapes the terms you are offered. Sponsors weighing project finance against a corporate MMIA structure should also read the MMIA feasibility study page and the EXIM requirements page before deciding which path to file.
EXIM states that a bankable project should have completed its feasibility studies, FEED, an approved ESIA and a preliminary finance plan structure before the application is submitted. Two of those — FEED and ESIA — are not ours to produce, and we are exact about that boundary. FEED is an engineering deliverable, produced by the independent engineer or the EPC contractor, that fixes the technical configuration and prices it to a defined accuracy. The ESIA is an environmental and social deliverable, produced by an environmental consultant and approved by the relevant authority. Our feasibility study is the economic and financial deliverable that sits on top of both: it tests whether the configuration priced by FEED can sell its output at a price and volume that services the debt, and it carries the schedule and cost consequences of the ESIA into the model. We reconcile to those documents — capacity, yield, capital cost, environmental conditions — and flag any gap between them and the cash-flow assumptions; we do not restate or substitute for them. A study that quietly rewrites the engineer's numbers to improve coverage is worse than no study at all, because the divergence will be found.
The methodology does not change by program: primary market research, industry production and pricing data, location-adjusted facility cost data and RMA operating benchmarks feed a model that is fully linked with no hardcoded values, so any reviewer can stress any input and watch the coverage move. Standard delivery is 10–15 business days from complete project data; a full limited-recourse model, or offtake verification across several destination markets, extends that. Every engagement is delivered through a secure client portal, and our fee is never contingent on the conclusion — if the numbers do not support the project, the report says so.
Wert-Berater has not to date completed an engagement financed by EXIM, and we make no claim that EXIM has reviewed, accepted or affiliated with our work. Our studies are prepared to address EXIM's published requirements using an EXIM-aligned methodology, led and reviewed by founder Donald Safranek, MSc, Founder & President. Across more than 4,000 studies since 1998 and $40.2 billion in evaluated project value, our directly adjacent, verifiable work includes oil and gas refining engagements in Qatar and Dubai (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; manufacturing facility studies in Bulgaria, Finland, the Czech Republic, Germany and Saudi Arabia; and an extensive record of SBA 504/7(a) and USDA Business & Industry manufacturing and processing studies prepared to SOP 50 10 8 and RD Instruction 5001. Whether a given application succeeds is EXIM's determination, not ours.
Because repayment depends on the project's own contracted cash flow, every input to that cash flow must be independently supportable — which is why EXIM subjects these transactions to extensive underwriting across technical, environmental, market, financial, legal and insurance due diligence.
So the absence of signed offtake changes the structure rather than barring the application: you either bring firm contracts or you bring more equity and stronger support, and the study makes the resulting merchant-risk position explicit.
Tell us the project, the offtake and supply arrangements, the construction structure and the financing you are contemplating. We will tell you whether the project is application-ready, what evidence is missing, and what the study will cost before you commit.
Qualify an EXIM project. Scope, timeline and fee confirmed in writing before work begins. Independent findings, never contingent on the outcome.
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