Investors often treat an offtake agreement as proof that revenue is solved. It is proof of a contract, not proof of cash. The document protects a price, a volume, or both, and only for as long as the buyer performs and the clause you care about survives a dispute.

Start with the buyer, not the tariff

A twenty-year price with a weak buyer is a credit underwriting. Ask who pays, what their balance sheet looks like, and whether a parent guarantee sits behind the signature. A government, a utility, and a newly formed trader are not the same counterparty, even when the price formula looks identical.

Read the exits before the price

Termination for convenience, change in law, and curtailment decide whether the price you modeled is the price you keep. If the buyer can leave, reset the price, or refuse energy the plant was built to produce, the agreement protects less than the cover page suggests.

A useful offtake memo answers three questions in one page: who pays, what can change the price, and what you own if the contract ends early.