Business Profile

Today, it is the dominant local source of the country’s coal requirements, supplying coal to power plants, cement plants, and other small boilers. As an emerging key player in the Philippine power industry, it is committed to providing affordable and reliable power to customers and to the rest of the Philippines.

About the Company

Incorporated in the Philippines on 26 February 1980, SMPC began as the Semirara Coal Corporation (SCC). It had exclusive rights to explore, extract and develop the coal resources in Semirara Island, Antique Province – a right the company retains to this day.

After commencing commercial operations in 1988, the Company struggled through low productivity, operational inefficiencies, debt restructuring, falling coal prices, and the Philippine peso devaluation.

In April 1997, DMCI Holdings, Inc. (DMCI HI) acquired a 40% interest in SCC’s Common Shares, including PHP2.5 billion of its outstanding loans.

Following SCC’s sustained financial difficulties, DMCI HI agreed to a debt-to-equity conversion in 1998, raising its total interest in SMPC to 74%.

After gaining a controlling interest in SMPC, DMCI HI appointed a new management team composed of local and expatriate staff in August 1999. Soon after, it changed its name to Semirara Mining Corporation (SMC).

In August 2014, SMC changed its name to the Semirara Mining and Power Corporation (SMPC) after successfully bidding for the 600 megawatt (MW) Calaca power plant of the National Power Corporation (NPC).

Since then, SMPC has adopted flexible, cost-efficient and more advanced mining techniques to increase the quantity and improve the quality of its coal production.

From an initial annual product coal production of 806,451 tons run-of-mine (ROM) coal in 1997, the Company was able to produce 11.9 million MT ROM coal in 2016. SMPC also posted a record-high coal shipment of 12.8 million MT in the same year.

Since the DMCI group bought into the company in 1997, the historical annual average rate increase for coal production is at 15%.

DMCI HI currently holds 56% ownership of SMPC.

Integrating Forward

In 2009, DMCI HI acquired the 600MW coal-fired power plants from the NPC and assigned its rights over the plant to SMPC, turning the company into the only vertically integrated power generation enterprise in the country.

Located in Calaca, Batangas, both units were primarily designed to run as base-load plants using coal from Semirara Island. However, due to low budget allocations from the Philippine government, the plants rapidly deteriorated, reducing their dependable capacity to around 350 MW.

To address the problem, the Calaca plants underwent rehabilitation and retrofitting in 2011. This enabled the Company to deliver additional power to the Luzon grid.

In August 2016, Southwest Luzon Power Corporation (SLPGC) commenced commercial operations of 2x150 MW CFB coal-fired plants, growing the company’s power capacity by 50% to 900MW.

SCPC and SLPGC produced a combined total of 4,292 GWh in 2016.

Moving forward, SMPC has embarked on a 3-year life extension program that will increase the generation capacity of SCPC’s Unit 1 by 50MW to 70MW using 100% Semirara coal. This program will also extend the life of SCPC power units by around 20 years.