NORD/LB Norddeutsche Landesbank has participated in the financing of a solar park in Australia together with six major international banks. The "Western Downs" solar park in the state of Queensland will be the largest solar park in Australia with a capacity of 460 MWp.
The total investment volume of the solar park amounts to around 370 mil-lion euros. In addition to NORD/LB Natixis, Société Générale, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, MUFG Bank, HSBC and Commonwealth Bank of Australia are among the Mandated Lead Arrangers of the transaction. At NORD/LB, the Structured Finance team of the Singapore branch was re-sponsible for the transaction.
"NORD/LB has been active in the financing of renewable energies for al-most 30 years," says Thomas Bürkle, Chairman of the Board of Manage-ment of NORD/LB. "What began with small wind farms in the North Ger-man Plain has now become a global market where our know-how is sought after. We are pleased that, despite the corona pandemic, we are again able to make a contribution to overcoming the climate crisis this year with numerous project financings in the renewable energy sector".
The Western Downs solar park is a major milestone in Queensland's cli-mate goal of generating at least 50 percent of its energy consumption from renewable sources by 2030. It will supply over 200,000 Australian house-holds with electricity.
The park is built and operated by Neoen, a French renewable energy com-pany that operates solar and wind farms in 14 countries worldwide. This is already the third financing that NORD/LB has provided for Neoen. The park is scheduled to be commissioned in 2022.
About NORD/LB
NORD/LB Norddeutsche Landesbank is one of the leading German commercial banks with to-tal assets of EUR 134 billion. The core business segments include business with corporate cus-tomers, private and commercial customers including private banking as well as special fi-nance in the energy and infrastructure sector, aircraft finance and commercial real estate fi-nance. The bank is headquartered in Hanover, Brunswick and Magdeburg and has branches in Bremen, Oldenburg, Hamburg, Schwerin, Düsseldorf, Munich and Stuttgart. Outside Germany NORD/LB is represented by a Pfandbrief Bank (NORD/LB Covered Bond Bank) in Luxembourg and branches in London, New York, Singapore and Shanghai.