Herbert Smith Freehills has advised Infrastructure Capital Group (ICG) and the Energy Infrastructure Trust (EIT) on the successful acquisition of the Bald Hills Wind Farm – a 52-turbine wind farm with an aggregate installed capacity of 106.6MW located in South Gippsland, Victoria. The wind farm has an offtake agreement with Alinta that runs to 2030.
EIT acquired the Bald Hills Wind Farm from the project’s developer, Mitsui & Co, bringing ICG’s renewable energy generation capacity to 455MW across five wind farms in Australia.
The transaction was completed on 28 February 2017 and follows a competitive bid process. As part of the transaction, EIT assumed the existing project financing for the project.
The Herbert Smith Freehills team was led by partners David Ryan and Gerard Pike, who were assisted by senior associate Jennifer Harding and solicitors Mary Griffiths and Kai Ito.
David Ryan commented: “We are very pleased to have worked with Craig Whalen, Daniel Beaver, Adrian Kong and the rest of the team at ICG on their successful acquisition of the Bald Hills Wind Farm, and to assist with the continued expansion of EIT’s renewable energy portfolio in Australia. ICG is a commercial and sophisticated investor and always a pleasure to work with.”
ICG and EIT were also advised by Rothschild and EY. Corrs Chambers Westgarth acted for Mitsui and the financiers.
Herbert Smith Freehills has recently advised on a number of other successful transactions in the Australian renewable energy industry, including:
• Origin Energy on its sale process for the Stockyard Hill wind farm project
• First Solar on the sale of its interests in the Broken Hill and Nyngan solar farms
• The financiers to Ratch Australia’s Mt Emerald wind farm
• Origin Energy on the sale of Cullerin Range wind farm
• Santander on the sale of Taralga wind farm
• SunEdison on the sale of the Karratha and Mt Majura solar projects
• John Laing on the acquisition of the Kiata wind farm project
• IFM on the sale of Pacific Hydro
• RES on the development, equity sell down and project financing of the Ararat wind farm project
