Otary has reached financial close on the over 487MW Seamade offshore wind farm off the coast of Belgium.
A total of €1.3bn will be invested in the project, which will kick off construction next summer. Commissioning is scheduled for late 2020.
A consortium of lenders includes the European Investment Bank, the Danish export credit agency EKF and 15 commercial banks are providing funding for the project.
The banks are Santander, Bank of China, Belfius, BNP Paribas, Commerzbank, Rabobank, ASN Bank, ING, KBC, KfW IPEX, MUFG, Siemens Bank, Societe Generale, SMTB and Triodos.
EIB will provide €250m via the European Fund for Strategic Investments.
Seamade chief executive Mathias Verkest said: “We are pleased that our project milestones are achieved in time trough tremendous efforts of many as we are working on a quite ambitious timing towards 2020.”
Seamade has also confirmed that a consortium of Engie Fabricom, Tractebel, Smulders and Geosea has been chosen as EPCI contractor the project’s two substations.
Two export wires will be produced by Hellenic Cables and installed by Tideways. Both the substations and the export cable contract awards were first reported in the subscriber-only newsletter reNEWS.
Siemens Gamesa has also confirmed that it will supply 58 turbines for the project with individual capacity of 8.4MW and rotor diameters of 167 metres.
The deal covers supply and installation of the machines, as well as a 17-year service agreement.
Siemens Gamesa offshore business chief executive Andreas Nauen said: “We are very pleased that our preferred supplier agreement announced in March 2018 has now become a fully confirmed order with SeaMade.”
Turnkey contractor Dredging International is in the process of selecting suppliers for the monopile foundations and array cabling.
Otary comprises Belgian companies Socofe, DEME, Power@Sea, Elicio, Aspiravi, Green Offshore, SRIW and Z-Kracht. Electrabel and Eneco are also minority shareholders in Seamade.