WindMW, the company behind the Meerwind offshore wind farm, has issued a EUR 978 million in bonds to refinance an existing bank debt for the construction of the 288MW offshore wind project.
The bonds were issued on 17 December 2015 to a group of around 20 international institutional investors and benefit from investment grade ratings from the three main rating agencies. Proceeds are mainly used to close the existing bank debt of around EUR 850 million, which was raised in August 2011 to finance the construction of Meerwind.
The project, which consists of two wind farms – Meerwind Süd and Meerwind Ost, is one of the first commercial offshore wind farms in operation in Germany. Meerwind comprises 80 Siemens 3.6MW wind turbines installed in the German Bight in the North Sea, 23km north of the island of Helgoland.
With the news about project refinancing, Green Giraffe reported that it helped WindMW to benchmark the proposed bond option against a restructuring of the existing bank debt. The specialist advisory company also acted as financial advisor to WindMW in 2011 and helped raise EUR 869 million in long term construction facilities. After financial close, Green Giraffe assisted WindMW in liaising with and reporting to the lending group throughout construction, which was formally completed in September 2015.