BackLuxembourg, 11/01/2024 – Greenalia, a biomass electric power production plant in Spain’s Galicia region, secured a senior debt package from Incus Capital to refinance the existing senior debt and mezzanine. The deal was closed on 12 December 2023.
The existing senior debt had been provided by EIB, ICO and Santander – with a portion covered by insurance from the Finnish ECA, Finnvera – and a EUR 23m mezzanine loan was provided by Marguerite II in 2018. The funds were raised to finance the construction of the plant in La Coruña’s municipalities of Curtis and Teixeiro (Galicia, Spain).
The Curtis-Teixeiro biomass plant has a capacity of approximately 50 MWe, built on a land plot of 103,000m2, and started to produce electricity in 2020. It is expected to generate 370GWh per year from forest waste collected within a radius of 100 km around the new installation. To produce this energy, the plant uses about 570,000 tonnes of forest biomass a year.
The project provides substantial socio-economic benefits as it allows better use of harvest residues as a source of energy (reducing the use of fossil fuels), contributing to forest maintenance in the area and fire prevention by encouraging the collection of small-sized wood waste for industrial use that is normally discarded. The biomass used by the plant is either FSC or PEFC-certified.
This project was one of the first to be implemented under the new regulatory framework for the industry approved in Spain in 2013. Greenalia was the winning bidder in Spain’s first auction for new renewables-based power generation facilities in early 2016, which allowed the Curtis-Teixeiro plant to benefit from a 25-year regulated tariff.
William Pierson, Managing Partner at Marguerite, said: “We are pleased that Marguerite could provide Greenalia crucial support in providing needed capital for the successful construction of one of the major biomass projects in Spain and secure a successful exit”.
In this transaction, Marguerite was advised by Pérez-Llorca (legal).