Fundraising

SUSI in European deal spree

The Swiss firm’s renewables fund has bought a wind farm in Finland while its energy efficiency counterpart has financed a street lighting scheme in Italy.

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SUSI Partners has sealed two deals via its renewables and energy efficiency funds just days after securing its first energy storage investment.

The Switzerland-based firm has bought the 21MW Kopsa I wind farm in Finland through its second renewable energy fund, which closed at €380 million earlier this month. The project, one of the largest wind farms owned by the fund, was bought from Finnish utility Puhuri Oy.

Landesbank Baden-Württemberg provided debt financing for the acquisition, the terms of which were not disclosed.

The Kopsa I project, the second asset of SUSI’s renewables fund in Finland, has been in operation since October 2013. Otto von Troschke, chief investment officer of SUSI Partners, said in a statement that the fund manager is “planning to execute further transactions in the Finnish wind, solar as well as energy efficiency markets”.

Meanwhile, SUSI’s energy efficiency fund has financed the retrofitting of over 40,000 street lighting points across five municipalities in Italy, alongside energy saving company Gemmo. SUSI said it will be due payments of over €17 million as part of the deal.

The scheme is set to save the municipalities about 19GWh of energy consumption annually. It is the fund’s seventh lighting retrofit deal over the past year, with commitments totalling about €70 million.

The €250 million energy efficiency vehicle finances projects off-balance sheet while partners such as Gemmo implement them.

The two deals come in the same week that SUSI financed the first energy storage projects from its recently launched energy storage fund. Asif Rafique, managing director for energy storage at the firm, told Infrastructure Investor that SUSI is seeking a first close on the fund early next year.