John Laing builds £350m RE plan

John Laing Group expects to invest up to £359m in renewable energy assets over the next two years.

The infrastructure group’s annual results today revealed that a number of deals are being finalised and will be announced shortly.

In 2015, the company closed deals worth £110m for renewable energy projects. The pick of these was a £33.8m deal to acquire the 89MW Klettwitz wind farm repowering project in Germany. It will feature Vestas V112 3.3MW turbines.

It also closed a deal to acquire the 35MW Glencarbry wind farm in Ireland which will feature seven Nordex N100/3300s and five N90/2500s.

Chief executive Olivier Brousse said “increasingly competitive” onshore wind and solar markets may drive the company elsewhere.

“As a result, we are assessing related opportunities such as the repowering of older wind farms, together with offshore wind. We are also investigating further biomass and waste-to-energy projects,” he said.

“We are careful always to take into account the latest industry forecasts for energy price and to maintain an appropriate balance of availability and volume-based investments in our portfolio.”

The full results shows the company made a pre-tax profit of £106.6m for 2015, down from £120.4m a year earlier.

Brousse added: “2015 has been a very good year for John Laing with more than 15% of net asset value growth. Our business model has proved resilient in a volatile macro-economic environment. 

“We have the people, agility and brand recognition to take advantage of the markets for new infrastructure in the regions we operate in and we are confident in our future prospects.”

Image: Bilsthorpe wind farm (John Laing)