Aquila European Renewables Income (AERI) announced that its fully owned subsidiary, Tesseract Holdings Limited, has reached an agreement (under a share sale and purchase agreement) to acquire 89% of Desfina, an operational wind farm in Greece for an undisclosed amount. Upon completion of the acquisitions of Albeniz (as announced on 23 December) and Desfina, AERI will have committed approximately EUR 88m of the recent EUR 127.5m that was raised in October. Closing under the SPA is expected to occur shortly.
‘Project to save 16,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per annum and an estimated 400,000 tonnes over the projected lifetime’
Desfina is an operating, onshore wind project, which consists of two wind farms with an aggregate capacity of approximately 40 MW. The project is supported by an attractive, 20 year, feed-in premium for 100% of production and has an existing long-term (15 year) debt financing in place of approximately EUR 41.5m, which will be retained as part of the acquisition. Desfina is expected to have an operating life of 25 years.
The project will save over 16,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per annum and an estimated 400,000 tonnes over the projected lifetime of the asset.
Ian Nolan, AERI’s chairman, noted: “Desfina is our first investment in Greece and notably benefits from a long-term feed-in premium at attractive terms.”
Commenting on today’s announcement, Christine Brockwell, head of partnerships & portfolio management at Aquila Capital, AERI’s manager: “We are excited to be able to secure this opportunity which will further enhance AERI’s contracted revenue base over a significant time frame as well as offer further geographic diversification to the portfolio. These are fundamental principles of AERI’s investment policy and we believe will continue to prove attractive to existing and potential investors.”
AERI: Aquila European Renewables Income seals first investment in Greece with 40 MW wind deal