NTR to spend €180m on wind farms in Sweden and Finland

16 Jan 2019

Image: © Arndale/Stock.adobe.com

Irish-based renewable energy player certainly knows its geography as it invests in Scandinavian wind assets.

Sustainable infrastructure investor NTR is to invest more than €180m in a portfolio of more than 200MW of operational and pre-construction onshore wind projects in Sweden and Finland.

The portfolio comprises three operational projects totalling 94MW and one advanced-stage development cluster totalling 108MW potential capacity in southern Sweden. NTR acquired the portfolio – called Vindin – from a consortium of nine Swedish industrial companies.

The three operational projects – Trattberget (69MW) located in the Örnsköldsvik municipality in northern Sweden; Skutskär (10MW) based at the Swedish town’s port in Medora Bay; and Svalskulla (15MW), located in the Ostrobothnia region of Finland – came into operation at various dates between 2009 and 2014.

NTR expects to bring Norra-Vedbo, the development project cluster, into operation in 2021.

Breezing into the Scandinavian wind market

NTR will put in place long-term power price contracts for the Swedish projects, for which there is considerable demand, given the scale of the portfolio. Svalskulla, the 15MW project located in Finland, benefits from the Feed-in Tariff programme supported by the Finnish government. The projects will be funded with project finance debt.

The transaction comes hot on the heels of two recent acquisitions of solar and wind projects in the UK and France through the NTR Renewable Energy Income Fund II. Targeting a fundraising figure of €500m, NTR also recently announced that it successfully secured first closing commitments of €229m.

NTR has so far constructed and operated 2GW of wind projects and 630MW of solar projects across Europe and the US.

“Sweden and Finland represent exciting new geographies for the fund, each having ambitious renewable energy targets and a stable economic outlook,” said Manus O’Donnell, chief investment officer of NTR.

“This portfolio of projects provides an attractive mix across the development life cycle, in line with our fund’s strategy to complement projects in development with those already up and running.”

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com