Deutsche Bank has arranged a deal with Conergy, worth US$60 million (~£35 million), to allow the downstream solar company to expand the capacity of its forthcoming projects by as much as 400MWp.
Conergy announced that it has closed a bank guarantee worth US$60 million for what it calls “the company’s rapidly growing solar projects business”.
The company said the guarantee facility, financed by alternative investment management firm Tenenbaum Capital Partners under the stewardship of Deustche Bank, would be used to strengthen Conergy’s position along its value chain in high growth markets – segments including its engineering, procurement and construction (EPC), project development and operations and maintenance (O&M) are expected to benefit.
Conergy is active in 13 different regional markets worldwide and was itself acquired by investment firm Kawa Capital Group in the summer of 2013.
Speaking to Solar Power Portal’s sister site, PV Tech at the recent Intersolar Europe show, Conergy chief operating officer Alexander Gorski gave his opinion on what makes renewable energy increasingly attractive as an investment class. He said: “There are many factors. One is that the technology is very robust, for sure it took some years to get there but in the meantime it’s a very robust technology and most of the investors have understood [that].
“Secondly, solar became very competitive so that in many markets you are not dependent any more on subsidies or feed-in tariff, you’re talking about a grid parity business model in many markets which is also important for investors and at the end of the day for an investor it means to receive a very stable, predictable cashflow over many, many years and this raised a lot of intention for institutional investors.”
UK ambitions
In yet more Conergy news at the beginning of this week, the company also made two announcements relating to its involvement in the UK market. Wirsol Solar, now a Conergy subsidiary, has bought project rights to 166MWp of UK PV plants at various stages of construction from developer Lumicity, which Conergy claims could be worth as much as US$340 million.
Conergy also announced today the forthcoming construction of a 21MWp PV plant in Bristol, England, bringing its portfolio of UK projects built or under construction this year up to 126MWp in total. Alexander Gorski told PV Tech: “This year, our plan is to do more than 250MW of business in the UK.”