Terra Firma’s RTR bulks up solar assets

Rete Rinnovabile (RTR), an Italian solar producer owned by private equity firm Terra Firma, has added two photovoltaic plants to its portfolio.

The two plants have respective generation capacities of 13.5 megawatts (MW) and 6.7MW respectively. Located in Priolo and Augusta, Sicily, they generate enough power to meet the annual electricity requirements of 11,000 households.

The transaction will bring RTR’s portfolio to 119 Italian assets, which altogether have an installed capacity of 318MW. Annual energy production exceeds 430 gigawatt-hours (GWh).

“We are pleased that RTR continues to make good progress in expanding its capacity through bolt-on acquisitions. Since Terra Firma’s acquisition of the business in 2011, installed capacity has more than doubled from 144MW to 318MW,” said Ingmar Wilhelm, chairman of RTR and financial managing director at Terra Firma.

Headquartered in Roma, RTR is Italy’s largest solar energy producer. It has two-thirds of its revenues guaranteed under a 20-year ‘feed in’ tariff set by the Italian government.

The news follows Terra Firma’s partial exit from Infinis through a float on the London Stock Exchange in November. The offering gave the UK renewable power business a market capitalisation of £780 million (€944 million; $1.3 billion).

It also comes a couple of months after senior executives Mike Kinski, Stefan Thiele and Ingmar Wilhelm replaced Terra Firma star dealmaker Damian Darragh at the helm of the firm’s renewables team.

The firm is currently raising its maiden renewables vehicle with a target of $2 billion.