Augusta & Co is pleased to have advised Fortum on the completion of a transaction to divest an 80% stake in its Nordic wind portfolio to funds advised by Credit Suisse Energy Infrastructure Partners (CSEIP) as well as the closing of a senior project finance loan provided by Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) and National Australia Bank (NAB).
This complex transaction on behalf of Finland’s largest energy company comprises pre-construction, under construction and operating wind farms totalling approximately 500MW in three jurisdictions with a variety of offtake and subsidy structures, including a corporate PPA.
The portfolio consists of the operational Nygårdsfjellet (32MW, Norway), Ånstadblåheia (50MW, Norway), and Solberg (76MW, Sweden) wind parks as well as the Kalax (90MW, Finland) wind park, which is currently under construction. As previously announced, the Kalax wind park benefits from a 12-year PPA for 70% of its production volume from Neste and a premium tariff awarded under Finland’s tender in May 2019.
CSEIP will additionally purchase an 80% share of the under construction wind park Sørfjord (97MW, Norway) once it is commissioned. In addition, Fortum and CSEIP previously signed an exclusivity agreement on the Sävar (154MW, Sweden) project with the ambition to build it at a later stage. The acquisition of the latter two projects would increase the jointly owned capacity to approximately 500MW.
With this deal, Augusta has advised on over 2.8GW of completed transactions in the Nordic region in the last 4 years, providing integrated services covering equity capital, project finance debt and PPA origination