Mainstream secures €60m funding

Irish-founded wind and solar company Mainstream Renewable Power has assembled a €60m warchest, much of which will come from the National Pensions Reserve Fund.

Mainstream has successfully closed a four-year €60m corporate debt facility organised through BlueBay Ireland Corporate Credit and financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald.

The National Pensions Reserve Fund, through BlueBay, will provide a substantial part of the funding while a number of “Irish high net-worth individuals and institutions” are also to invest through Cantor Fitzgerald.

Commenting on the announcement, BlueBay head of Irish investments, Pat Walsh said: “Our involvement with Mainstream Renewable Power provided us with an ideal opportunity to both develop our exposure to renewable energy and to support a well-established and entrepreneurial Irish company”.

The fund comes at the tail-end of what has been a year in which Mainstream has made a number of significant moves in the renewable energy market, including bringing a number of projects to operation and gaining permission to build further large-scale ones.

The company, founded by Eddie O’Connor and Fintan Whelan in 2008 after selling Airtricity to SSE and E.ON for €2bn, successfully brought six large-scale and solar projects through construction and into commercial operation in South Africa, Chile, Canada and Ireland. It also announced plans to build Ghana’s first utility-scale windfarm and secured consent to build and operate two offshore windfarms off the coasts of Scotland and England respectively.

Mainstream also continued work on plans to build three windfarms in South Africa in early 2015.

In October of last year, the South African department of energy conferred preferred bidder status on the company for the construction of the three farms in the country’s Northern Cape region.

Mainstream chief executive Eddie O’Connor heralded the past 12 months as a very successful year for the company.

He said: “2014 was an outstanding year for Mainstream. Our global team successfully delivered wind and solar farms into commercial operation across four continents, including the largest operating windfarm on the continent of Africa.

“For our offshore business it was an exceptional year; after six years of development activities we were granted consent to build two very significant projects; the 450MW Neart na Gaoither project in Scotland as well as the 1,20oMW Hornsea Project in England,” said Mr O’Connor.