NORD/LB Norddeutsche Landesbank provides a non-recourse financing for BayWa r.e. renewable energy GmbH for the construction and operation of a wind farm in the southern Italian region of Basilikata. The wind farm will have a total installed capacity of 46.2 megawatts (MW) when completed, includes an overall investment volume of around EUR 80 million and is the first wind farm to be financed by NORD/LB in Italy.
The "Melfi 1" wind farm is comprised of 14 wind turbines manufactured by the Danish firm Vestas, each with a capacity of 3.3 MW, and is planned to generate an annual electricity yield of around 125,000 MWh for feeding into the grid – enough to provide power for a calculated 39,000 households. Construction work commenced in December 2014, with the commissioning of the final construction stage scheduled for June 2015. NORD/LB is financing the project in cooperation with Denmark's Export Credit Agency EFK (Eksportkreditfonden).
"The competences we have acquired in the course of many years of financing wind farms in northern Germany are becoming increasingly in demand in other European countries as well", said Eckhard Forst, member of the NORD/LB Managing Board. "We are delighted to have been able to take on the financing of a wind park in Italy for the very first time."
With total assets of EUR 197 billion, NORD/LB is among Germany's leading commercial banks. Its core business fields include structured financing in the energy and infrastructure sectors, ship and aircraft financing, corporate banking, commercial real estate financing, capital market business and the servicing of private and corporate customers. The bank is headquartered in Hanover, Braunschweig and Magdeburg, with branch operations in Düsseldorf, Munich, Hamburg and Schwerin and abroad in London, New York, Singapore and Shanghai, as well as a subsidiary in Luxembourg.
BayWa r.e. renewable energy GmbH is a 100-percent subsidiary of BayWa AG, in which the group's activities in the sphere of renewable energies are bundled. Headquartered in Munich, BayWa AG is an internationally active listed trading concern.
EKF (Eksportkreditfonden) is Denmark's export credit agency. It helps Danish companies and their customers abroad raise financing for their mutual business transactions. It does so by insuring companies and banks. Having guaranteed a large number of both onshore and offshore wind parks all over the world with a capacity of more than 7 GW, EKF is a leading export credit agency in the wind energy sector.
