Swedish wind energy developer Arise Windpower and European cleantech investment firm Platina have purchased project company Jadraas Vinkraft (JVAB) from Ownpower Projects Europe and Bergviks Skog for €336m.
JVAB holds a permit to install 116 wind turbines with a capacity of 200MW in the Jadraas region in the east of Sweden. Construction on the first 130MW is expected to begin in the next few weeks with this phase scheduled to become operational in the first quarter of 2013.
Debt and project financing was led by DNBNor with additional funds coming from Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken and EFK.
Peter Nygren, CEO of Arise Windpower, said, 'The acquisition will enable Arise to maintain the high pace of expansion that we have been planning for. We are now shifting a large share of our resources to the Jadraas project, which fits in well time-wise with other ongoing permit processes in our project portfolio. Platina is a valuable and knowledgeable partner, and we hope to develop this relationship also in other projects. When the Jadraas wind farm is fully operational in spring 2013 Arise will have a total annual production of about 650 GWh of renewable electricity.'
Emma Collins, a partner in Platina's renewable energy team, added, 'We are delighted to announce that we have completed the financing of our Jadraas wind farm. As our first development in Scandinavia this is a landmark project for Platina and as one of the largest onshore wind farms in the country, it will also be of great importance to Sweden. Having focused previous clean-energy efforts on hydro, the Swedish government is now placing increasing emphasis on onshore wind and has targeted to have an installed capacity of over 4.5GW by 2020. Jadraas will be an important step on that road and will demonstrate that major onshore wind projects are viable for Sweden.'