Pacific Hydro, the Australian-based renewable energy developer and operator now owned by a Chinese state company, says it has raised $670 million in a rarely used “multi-currency” facility to help finance new and existing projects in Australia and Chile.
Pacific Hydro is currently building the 28.7MW Yaloak South wind farm west of Melbourne, but has numerous other projects in the pipeline, including several wind farms and the massive 500MW Haughton solar farm in north Queensland.
It is also looking to develop new wind farms in Chile, where many of its wind and hydro assets are based, and in Brazil.
Pacific Hydro CEO Mike Fuge said in a statement that the innovative funding platform establishes one of the first cross-border portfolio financings for large-scale renewable energy.
“We are proud to be one of the first examples of such a major cross-border arrangement; this deal is a great demonstration of the power of global lending partnerships,” he said.
The facility will be used to refinance a number of project-financed assets and add capacity to expand the portfolio of assets in both Australia and Chile, where the company owns a number of hydro and wind assets.
The facility is funded by the Commonwealth bank of Australia and National Australia Bank, along with China Construction Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited, and DNB Asia.
The company, which was bought by State Power Investment Corporation of China last year, has wind and hydro capacity totalling around 850MW across Australia, Chile and Brazil, around 100MW under construction and another 1.7GW in the development pipeline.
