Aquila European Renewables Income Fund plc (“AERIF” or “the Company”), the London-listed investment company advised by Aquila Capital Investmentgesellschaft mbH, is pleased to announce that its fully owned subsidiary, Tesseract Holdings Limited (“THL”) has entered into a Share Sale and Purchase Agreement (“SPA”) to acquire 89% of Desfina, an operational wind farm in Greece for an undisclosed amount. Upon completion of the acquisitions of Albeniz (as announced via RNS on 23 December) and Desfina, the Company will have committed approximately EUR 88m of the recent EUR 127.5m that was raised in October. Closing under the SPA is expected to occur shortly.

Desfina is an operating, onshore wind project, which consists of two wind farms with an aggregate capacity of approximately 40 MW. The project is supported by an attractive, 20 year, Feed-in Premium for 100% of production and has an existing long-term (15 year) debt financing in place of approximately EUR 41.5m, which will be retained as part of the acquisition. Desfina is expected to have an operating life of 25 years.

The project will save over 16,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions per annum and an estimated 400,000 tonnes over the projected lifetime of the asset.

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Ian Nolan, Chairman of the Company, said: “With our recent acquisitions of Albeniz and now Desfina, AERIF is continuing its excellent track record of deploying capital into a range of renewable energy projects that meet our strict investment criteria. Desfina is our first investment in Greece and notably benefits from a long-term feed-in premium at attractive terms.”

Commenting on today’s announcement, Christine Brockwell, Head of Partnerships & Portfolio Management at Aquila Capital, the investment adviser: “We are excited to be able to secure this opportunity which will further enhance AERIFs contracted revenue base over a significant time frame as well as offer further geographic diversification to the portfolio. These are fundamental principles of AERIFs investment policy and we believe will continue to prove attractive to existing and potential investors.”   

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