WindMW closes financing for 288 MW offshore wind farm in Germany

Aug 8, 2011 - US private equity group Blackstone (NYSE:BX) last week said its portfolio company WindMW GmbH, an offshore wind farm developer, had completed the financing for its 288 MW Meerwind offshore wind farm in Germany.

The EUR-2.1-billion (USD 3bn) project located in the North Sea will receive EUR 288 million in funding from a group of seven commercial lenders, including Commerzbank (ETR:CBK), KfW IPEX-Bank, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Dexia (EBR:DEXB), Lloyds Banking Group (LON:LLOY), Santander (MCE:SAN) and Siemens Bank together with Denmark's export credit agency EKF and German state-owned development bank KfW-Bankengruppe.

Affiliates of Blackstone Capital Partners VI and Blackstone Energy Partners will provide almost all of the project's equity. German Windland Energieerzeugungs GmbH, the project's initial permit holder, is the other equity partner.

The financing will be used for the installation of 80 substructures with Siemens 3.6-MW wind turbines, laying of infield cables and installation of the offshore high-voltage substation.

The Meerwind farm is expected to be completed by 2013 and to produce enough electricity to power 400,000 homes and save some one million tonnes of carbon emissions a year. It will be the largest wind farm in Germany and the first German wind farm to be fully financed by private investors, according to Blackstone.

Blackstone said also it had obtained permit for a second North Sea project, the EUR-1.3-billion Nordlicher Grund wind farm. Construction of the 64-turbine project is planned to start in 2013 and finish in 2016.

(EUR 1.0 = USD 1.430)

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