British Solar Renewables has continued its sell-off of major assets with the sale of the 50MW Owls Hatch solar farm to Canadian pension fund-backed Cubico Sustainable Investments.
The latest deal takes the number of BSRprojects sold to Cubico over the last eight months to 11, totalling circa 120MW. BSR will remain as the O&M provider for Owls Hatch, as it has done for all the assets it has sold to Cubico.
Owls Hatch was connected to the national grid in March last year under the 1.3 ROC build-out phase, and at the time was one of the country’s largest operational solar farms.
Solar Power Portal revealed in March that BSR was in discussions with Cubico over the sale of a number of its sites as it prepared to focus on O&M.
BSR has continued its sell-off, and earlier this week another sizeable asset it helped to develop – the 60.9MW AC Swindon Solar Farm – was sold to Rockfire Capital.
Owls Hatch was one of the largest assets to remain on BSR’s books, and its sale will represent another step in the company’s evolution into a service provider, although BSR is still understood to have a pipeline of projects under 1.2 ROCs that it is aiming to complete prior to the March 2017 cut-off point.
David Peill, commercial director at BSR, said the proceeds of the sale would allow the company to focus on further solar development as well as a pipeline of energy storage projects.
This latest acquisition was financed using what Cubico has termed as a “hybrid project finance structure” incorporating total debt of £47.8 million. German bank Nord/LB acted as the mandated lead arranger and provider of a term loan and credit enhancement facility.
£24.5 million in long dated fixed rated notes was provided by Hastings’ managed funds.
David Swindin, head of EMEA at Cubico, said the fund was “delighted to have worked with BSR again” and to add to its growing portfolio in the UK.