Macquarie makes €67 million infrastructure debt investment in Spanish solar portfolio

Macquarie Infrastructure Debt Investment Solutions (MIDIS) today announced a new €67 million long-term debt facility to refinance a portfolio of solar assets located in southern Spain. 

The portfolio is owned by Eliantus Energy and is made up of 10 operational solar PV plants, totaling 43MWp in generation capacity. The facility, provided by MIDIS on behalf of its investors, consists of fixed rate, senior secured bonds on a 23-year amortising basis. MIDIS and Eliantus conducted the transaction bilaterally, with Santander acting as sole arranger. 

Tom van Rijsewijk, a Managing Director for MIDIS said: “This is our second infrastructure debt investment in the Spanish solar market in the last five months - evidence of the opportunity we see in the market for our investors. We worked closely with the team at Eliantus and Santander to ensure the debt was structured to meet their specific requirements and ensured that it could be delivered in a relatively short timetable, especially considering the summer months.” 

Adolfo Carvajal, CEO of Eliantus said: “Project Bonds have proved to be the way forward to finance solar infrastructure. Our first experience as issuers has been very positive thanks to alignment of interests with MIDIS and the help of Santander in the process of refinancing. In addition, the solution provided should allow us to focus in growing into a leading solar player in the Spanish market with the help of our partner JZI.” 

Miguel Rueda, Managing Partner for JZI said: “Thanks to our management team from Eliantus led by Adolfo Carvajal, we have been able to deploy a substantial amount of committed capital in the first year. The solution provided by MIDIS, will allow Eliantus and JZI to continue our consolidation of the small to mid-size plants solar PV market in Spain.” 

In June 2018 MIDIS made its first Spanish solar allocation in the €140 million bond issuance for the country’s largest solar PV operator, Sonnedix. A portion of both investments were provided through, Macquarie’s Global Infrastructure Debt Strategy. 

Since 2012, MIDIS has invested over €1.7 billion in infrastructure debt in renewable project transactions globally. These funds have been invested across 22 separate projects, with total installed capacity of approximately 4.7 GW. 

About Eliantus Energy

Launched in July 2017, Eliantus Energy is a vehicle established by JZ International Ltd. and Elliott Advisors (UK) Ltd. with a joint equity commitment of €100 million. Eliantus strategy is to consolidate through acquisitions a leading platform in the solar power industry in Spain. 

About JZI

JZ International (JZI) is a leading lower middle market pan-European private equity investor specializing in partnering with family/owner managed businesses looking for longer term growth capital. JZI operates from offices in London, Madrid, Amsterdam and New York.