Italy’s export credit agency Sace has agreed to cover a commercial bank loan worth US$600mn for food and beverage giant San Miguel, the latest deal signed under its booming untied programme.

The facility, signed on March 27, is being financed by SMBC and backstopped with a guarantee from Sace.

Sace is providing support under its Push strategy which was launched in 2017 and works to increase purchases of goods and services from Italy, without tying financing to specific export contracts.

Philippines-headquartered San Miguel Corporation, best-known for its flagship San Miguel beer, has agreed to participate in matchmaking events organised by Sace that will encourage the borrower to grow its business with Italian exporters.

There are several Italian supply chains that are potentially interested,” Sace says in a March 31 statement.

“In addition to being the largest food and beverage player in the Philippines and in the whole of Southeast Asia, [the firm] has diversified its activities towards several new industrial sectors such as energy and infrastructure,” it says in the release, which was translated from Italian.

SMBC’s managing director and co-head of structured finance for the Asia Pacific, Luca Tonello, says the deal is Sace’s first Push facility in the Philippines and its largest in Southeast Asia to date.

In the past three years, Sace has significantly grown its untied offering, backstopping loans worth billions of dollars for various types of borrowers – commodity traders, multilateral banks and infrastructure developers.

Initially, many of the deals were aimed at securing vital resources, such as gas, for the Italian market.

However, the agency’s Push strategy has since widened its remit. Last year, Sace agreed to cover a €100mn facility for the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank (TDB) and hailed it as the first Push deal for a multilateral lender.

In January, the Italian agency backed a US$3bn facility for Saudi Arabia’s futuristic Neom development.