Glennmont closes the acquisition of one of the largest wind portfolios in Italy
Glennmont Partners, one of the largest infrastructure investment managers dedicated to European clean energy, has completed the purchase of one of the most sizeable operational portfolios of wind farms in Italy. The investment totals 245MW across five sites located in Puglia and Sicily – two of highest wind resource areas of Italy. The wind farms are held by Societa’ Energie Rinnovabili (“SER”) and Societa’ Energie Rinnovabili 1 (“SER 1”) (together called the “SER portfolio”) and were purchased from Iberdrola, the Spanish listed utility.
The five sites have on average a five year operational history and are project financed by a club of Italian and international banks. The SER portfolio benefits from the Italian Feed-In Premium ten further years creating a hedge versus electricity price volatility.
Glennmont Partners have acquired the portfolio including a skilled in-house team of circa twenty employees managing the portfolio and providing technical, commercial, administrative and financial services to the wind farms. All existing lending banks have already consented to Glennmont becoming the new owner.
The investment fits Glennmont’s strategy of building a significant portfolio of renewable projects that is diversified across proven technologies in the most attractive European markets with a view to deliver stable and predictable returns to investors. Glennmont already owned approximately 80MW of wind generation capacity in Italy. Glennmont now manages in excess of 500MW of onshore wind capacity in France, Ireland, Italy and the UK as well as a further 300MW of biomass and solar.
Francesco Cacciabue, Partner of Glennmont, said: “The SER portfolio is a high quality wind farm portfolio of very significant size with a proven track record. This investment validates our strategy of building scale in a market on the back of steady asset cash flows with potential to unlock and add value over time by active asset management”.
