The UAE’s National Central Cooling Company (Tabreed) has closed an AED192.5m ($52m) project financing from Dubai’s Emirates NBD.

The long-term, limited resource facility will finance a district cooling plant at local Meraas’ Dubai Parks and Resorts.

In 2014, Tabreed signed a long term concession to provide 45,600 tons of cooling to the new Dubai Parks and Resorts development in Jebel Ali.

The plant is nearing completion and will be commissioned in time for the theme park’s opening, set for late 2016.

“Tabreed’s approach to financing new projects is to utilise long term project financing wherever possible which we believe is the best way of financing our assets and maximizing value for all stakeholders,” said Jasim Husain Thabet, Tabreed’s CEO, in a statement.

“This loan facility with Emirates NBD is a landmark deal as it is amongst the first district cooling transactions completed in the UAE under a limited recourse project finance structure for a greenfield development.”

Contractors are increasingly turning to banks to finance contracts underway and avoid cashflow issues.

Tabreed refinanced its AED2.6bn corporate debt facilities in January 2015, with local Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, First Gulf Bank and Mashreqbank acting as mandated lead arrangers. This allowed the company to buy back AED1bn of bonds from minority shareholder, Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala.

The company has a total capacity of 954,000 refrigeration tonnes from 61 plants in the UAE, and eight in other GCC countries. It made of AED254m of profit and AED891m in revenue in the first nine months of 2015.