Germany-based developer GreenSinergy and financial structuring firm REA Consult have entered formal engagement with institutional investors and prospective offtakers for the Eco-Refinerías del Sur (ERS) project — a power-to-liquid (PtL) sustainable aviation fuel facility in Patagonia, Argentina, with a full build-out capital requirement of approximately $2.5 billion. The project targets an initial production capacity of 100,000 tonnes of eSAF per year, commissioned in the early 2030s, scaling to 500,000 tonnes annually at full deployment. ERS was officially launched with support from Argentina’s Chubut provincial government in December 2024, and a site has been secured for the full facility.
The project is one of the largest development-stage PtL/eSAF projects in the southern hemisphere, and investors will be watching it as a bellwether for whether Latin America can emerge as a serious eSAF supply region. Patagonia’s wind resources are among the strongest and most consistent on the planet, making it a credible location for green hydrogen-powered fuel synthesis at industrial scale. The core challenge for PtL projects globally remains closing the gap between development ambition and bankable financing — and the ERS engagement process is a direct test of whether that gap is narrowing for southern hemisphere projects.
The ERS production process will use green hydrogen derived from Patagonian wind energy and desalinated seawater, fed into a Fischer-Tropsch synthesis route to produce eSAF and a naphtha by-product. French clean fuels technology company Axens signed an MoU with GreenSinergy in June 2025 to explore SAF development across Latin America, with ERS as the initial focus project. Axens is serving as licensor-of-record for the key process technologies: CO₂ capture, hydrogen purification, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, and final kerosene and naphtha upgrading. The technology stack is a commercially proven combination — the differentiating factor at ERS is the integration of all stages into a single industrial system powered by dedicated renewable generation.
This project brings together renewable power, hydrogen and fuel production into a single industrial system. Structuring it correctly from the outset is essential for scale, bankability and long-term execution.
GreenSinergy is leading technical design, permitting, and execution. REA Consult is responsible for financial and transaction structuring, coordinating investor engagement, and aligning the capital framework with international investment standards. The division of roles reflects an increasingly common structure for large-scale eSAF projects, where technical and financial complexity are handled by specialist firms working in parallel rather than sequentially. Other first-of-a-kind SAF facilities have demonstrated that separating those functions early is key to achieving financial close.
“This project brings together renewable power, hydrogen and fuel production into a single industrial system,” said Carlos Villalba, Managing Partner of GreenSinergy. “Structuring it correctly from the outset is essential for scale, bankability and long-term execution.”
Rachel Andalaft, Director of REA Consult, added: “Integrated SAF projects require coordination across energy generation, conversion and offtake infrastructure. Our role is to structure this complexity into a coherent financing framework that strategic capital can support.”
A significant enabling factor for international capital is ERS’s alignment with Argentina’s Régimen de Incentivo a las Grandes Inversiones (RIGI) — a regulatory and fiscal framework designed to provide long-term stability for capital-intensive infrastructure projects. For institutional investors evaluating exposure to an emerging market SAF project, RIGI provides the kind of regulatory predictability that is a prerequisite for non-recourse or limited-recourse project finance structures. The framework gives ERS a structural advantage over development-stage projects in markets that lack equivalent investor protections. Latin America is producing an increasing number of credible SAF development projects, and the success of ERS’s investor engagement process will shape how the region is perceived by international project finance markets for years to come.
With a site secured, provincial government backing, technology licensing in place, and investor engagement now formally underway, ERS is targeting early-2030s commissioning for its first 100,000-tonne phase. If the project reaches financial close, it will rank among the most significant eSAF infrastructure commitments in the southern hemisphere — and a concrete signal that PtL SAF production is beginning to scale beyond Europe and North America.
Source: GreenAir News
