Project Frame

A structured brief was provided (Salerno-Thai-Biomethane-Framing.md). It is used as given. Nothing in it had to be reconstructed. Summarized here only so that later passes and isolated agents have it in one place.

Decision. What is the optimal way for Salerno Thailand to develop a biomethane production-and-export business in Southern Thailand, with Singapore as the export target? The immediate call is whether the midstream and export business clears Salerno Thailand's hurdle and is worth pursuing.

Answer format. A rendered recommendation. The brief asks for a Go / No-Go against numeric bands, names a Borderline band and says explicitly that "a verdict of borderline without those three is not an answer." That is a brief demanding a call, so every later instruction in this process to render a verdict applies.

Scope. In: the aggregation, logistics and trading business above the mills, collecting biomethane toward a Songkhla-area hub and delivering it to market. Out: export to anywhere other than Singapore.

Success criteria, verbatim in substance.

• Project economics on a modeled delivered-cost basis at the fixed $20 bundled price: PIRR at or above 13% is Go; 8 to 13% is Borderline and turns on whether three named levers can be moved far enough; below 8% is No-Go. Payback at or under 8 years including construction, over a 15-year life.
• Salerno-level return: blended annual profit — equity dividends plus structurable service, EPC/O&M, trading or custody fees — at or above US$10M a year at target scale, on a rising trajectory, consistent with a 25 to 30% stake.
• Scale: a credible staged path to at least 200 TPD, with a first-phase hub of at least 100 TPD, supported by a bottom-up supply estimate built from Southern wet-mill sizes and literature POME/biogas yields.
• Achievability of the three financial conditions: an offtake-price floor at or below $20; a feedstock-cost ceiling at or above the benchmarked achievable cost (reference 3.25 THB/kg); a route-cost ceiling that at least one route clears on modeled cost, including under the cost-stress case.
• Defensible role: a durable margin above feedstock pass-through, an aggregation and custody position hard to replicate on public evidence, and a structure supporting 8-year-plus supply and offtake terms.

Constraints. Decision by end of 2026. Production in the Surat Thani / Krabi / Songkhla corridor. Singapore is the only export market in scope. Fifteen-year asset life, roughly 6-month construction. POME only, from wet mills. Per-mill commercial terms are out of scope; the analysis takes aggregate volume and ex-plant price as inputs. Project company of three to four shareholders, Thai owners above 50% collectively, Salerno directly 25 to 30%. Generic PSA upgrading, equipment selected by Kestrel.

Structure requested. The brief specifies no memo structure. The MoU study framework (MoU-Objective-and-Study-Framework.md, slide 2) sets out a feasibility-study outline in two parts, but that is the scope of the joint study with SIG rather than a required shape for this memo, and it was written in November 2025 against a wider feedstock scope than the brief now allows. It is treated as indicative coverage, not as a binding heading list. Pass 1 builds the outline.