Finance totalling €51m has been arranged for the 36MW Bogoslovec wind farm in North Macedonia, the country’s first private wind energy project.
Erste Group, acting as the sole mandated lead arranger, major senior lender and agent, arranged and structured the transaction and invited local banks, including Sparkasse Bank Makedonija, to be among the institutions providing financing with a 17-year tenor.
The total debt package for Bogoslovec also includes a junior debt tranche of €10m from Oesterreichische Entwicklungsbank, the development bank of Austria.
Erste Group chief corporates and markets officer Ingo Bleier said: “We at Erste Group are grateful that we had the opportunity to arrange financing for North Macedonia’s first significant private wind energy project.
“The Bogoslovec wind park marks another important contribution to the transition to greener energy in the West Balkans. We will continue supporting that transition across our core markets.”
In total, Bogoslovec will cost €61m and be built 80km southeast of Skopje near the village of Bogoslovec.
The project is scheduled to be completed in early 2023.
Siemens Gamesa will supply and install eight turbines, with rotor diameters of 145 metres and hub heights of 102.5 metres.
Bogoslovec will be the second wind farm in North Macedonia, following the Bogdanci project commissioned by the state utility ESM in 2015.
It will sell its power at a feed-in tariff under a 20-year power purchase agreement with the state market operator.
A majority (65%) of the shares in the Bogoslovec project is held by BNB Kompani, a local family holding that operates five small hydro power plants and has developed the project up to the permitting stage.
The 35% minority investor is Green for Growth, an impact investment fund.
Prague-based Curo Energy acts as the project’s financial advisor and serves as an experienced construction and operations manager.