Article by uncan Evans and Kathleen Skene, courtesy of The Australian Business Network
20.02.2026
A national green energy company behind a massive publicly-subsidised solar power plant in regional South Australia is likely to be wound up and sold off for scraps.
Vast Renewables, founded by Sydney’s billionaire Kahlbetzer family, tumbled into administration last December with an estimated $79m in debts.
It had received $21.5m in grant money from the Federal Government for a South Australian solar plant as of June 30 last year, records show.
The Sydney-based group had its main manufacturing facility in the Brisbane suburb of Goodna.
This week, KPMG administrators Peter Gothard and Amanda Coneyworth recommended creditors accept a deed of company arrangement that would sell off the company’s assets and transfer its intellectual property to the taxpayer-funded Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
“The primary purpose of the proposed DOCA is to provide participating creditors with a better outcome than what would be achieved in a liquidation scenario,” the administrators’ report states.
Under the terms of the DOCA, the assets and creditor claims of the 11 companies that together make up Vast Renewables would be pooled together.
A single deed fund would be created to meet the claims of unsecured creditors, which amount to $30.6m.
US company Nabors, a lender to Vast, and Taloumbi, the company linked to Vast CEO Craig Wood, would contribute $50,000 each to the fund.
Vast’s property, assets and undertakings would be sold off, with all proceeds going to the fund.
Nabors and ARENA are both creditors, but have agreed not to participate in distributions, reducing total creditor claims from $58.4m to $30.6m, the report states.
Further, the DOCA entails transferring all of Vast’s intellectual property to ARENA “in order to maximise the chances of its commercialisation in Australia.”
ARENA holds a claim of $24.5m against Vast, the report shows, about 45 per cent of the total debt.
Under the arrangement, KPMG estimates unsecured creditors will get back 3.2c to 4.2c on the dollar.
Under a liquidation scenario, unsecured creditors would likely receive 1.6c to 2.9c back on the dollar.
Once distributions are made from the fund and the transfer of intellectual property is complete, the administrators would then be appointed liquidators and wind up the company, the report states.
Creditors are expected to vote on the proposal on Wednesday.
Before its shock collapse, Vast boasted a sweep of projects in the pipeline, including a 30MW solar plant in South Australia’s Port Augusta.
The project was forecast to create 450 jobs during construction, with 70 ongoing roles once the plant was operational.
It is now likely to be put on hold, administrators confirmed.
The Goodna facility is also expected to shut down.
Some fifty employees have already been made redundant, the administrators said.
The DOCA pays out all entitlements to impacted employees.
The group also received $700,000 from the Australia-Singapore Low Emissions Technologies initiative in August and $437,000 towards a solar project in Jemalong NSW in 2012.
Its solar methanol project, under way in partnership with Mabanaft, received grant funding totalling $42m from the German and Australian governments via the German-Australian Hydrogen Innovation and Technology Incubator initiative.
In its 2024-25 financial report, Vast revealed a $4.56m loss, an improvement from a $294m loss recorded in the previous year.
Originally published as KPMG administrators recommend DOCA to wind up green energy company Vast Renewables
