Consortium Buys Veja Mate Offshore Wind

A consortium led by asset manager Commerz Real AG, WPD Invest, KGAL and IKEA franchisee Ingka Group will acquire an 80% stake in the 402-MW Veja Mate offshore wind park in the German North Sea.

Veja Mate offshore wind park in the North Sea  is the second-largest German offshore wind farm with 67 turbines and a capacity of 402 megawatts. The total investment comes more than two billion euros

Commerz Real and Ingka Group said in a joint statement today that they will each invest more than EUR 200 million (USD 226m) in the project company for the 67-turbine wind park.

The other members of the buying consortium are Wpd invest GmbH and investment manager KGAL, while the sellers are Highland Group Holdings, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) and Siemens Financial Services. The latter will keep a 20% interest in the offshore wind park, which is Germany’s second largest.

The sellers of the wind farm, which has been in operation since 2017, are the project developers and owners to date, Highland Group Holdings and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, as well as Siemens Financial Services. The latter continues to hold the remaining 20 per cent stake and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy acts as the technical partner in the framework of a full-service agreement.

Veja Mate is located in Germany’s exclusive economic zone in the North Sea about 95 kilometres to the North West of the island of Borkum and covers a total area of 51 square kilometres.

The mean wind speed there is more than 10 metres per second. The rotor diameter of the 180 metres high turbines is 154 metres. The foundations have a diameter of 7.8 metres and are as much as 84.5 metres long, making them the largest of their type to be manufactured to date. The turbines are designed for an operating period of 25 years.

The maintenance agreement with Siemens has initially been concluded for 15 years. In accordance with Germany’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG 2014) a 20-year promotional period through to 2037 is foreseen for the feed-in tariff. The operation of the wind park will lead to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of some 950,000 tonnes per year.

"Veja Mate has an optimum risk-return ratio. A future technology that is already very well established was commissioned on schedule and to budget; it produces stable cash flows and also makes an effective contribution to achieve the climate protection targets," Johannes Anschott, a member of the board of managing directors of Commerz Real said.