Australia-to-Asia power project will go up for sale in January

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - A huge solar power project in Australia that collapsed last week will be put up for sale before the end of January and the sale process is expected to take about three months, administrators at FTI Consulting said on Friday.

The administrators said they plan to appoint an adviser shortly to run the sale of Sun Cable, a Singapore-based company that collapsed after its two top investors, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest, failed to agree on future funding plans.

"Indicative timing for the sale process is approximately three months," the administrators said in a statement released after the first meeting of creditors.

Sun Cable designed its key project, Australia-Asia PowerLink, to send power from a 20 gigawatt (GW) solar farm with the world's biggest battery in northern Australia across what would be the world's longest undersea cable, to Singapore.

Tech billionaire Cannon-Brookes, who is chairman of Sun Cable, backs that plan. However, iron ore magnate Forrest's private firm Squadron Energy called for an overhaul of the project, aiming to scrap the undersea cable plan.

Both camps are expected to submit bids for the company.

(Reporting by Sonali Paul; Editing by Rashmi Aich)