John Laing achieves FC on 14MW wind farm in Northamptonshire

New Albion Wind Ltd, a special purpose vehicle wholly owned by John Laing has achieved financial close on the 14.35MW New Albion Wind Farm near Kettering in Northamptonshire.

John Laing acquired the New Albion Wind Farm from wind developers, Infinergy in August 2014 after planning consent had been received from Kettering Borough Council in 2010.

The project comprises seven wind turbines and the wind turbine technology, hubs, blades and a full 15-year service package will be provided by Senvion SE. Each MM82 wind turbine will have an installed generating capacity of 2.05MW. The overall height of the turbines will be 100m. The MM82 is the same turbine model that John Laing installed at its Bilsthorpe and Wear Point Wind farms, both of which reached financial close during 2012

It is anticipated that the facility will generate enough electricity to meet the annual electricity demands of approximately 8,000 average UK households per year and will replace between 13,500 and 33,000 tonnes of CO2, depending on whether the power it replaces is generated by either gas or coal fired power stations respectively.

Olivier Brousse, John Laing CEO, said:

“Renewable energy remains an important growth sector for us and we have made considerable progress in gaining a strong position in the market. The financial close of New Albion Wind Farm follows our recent agreement with Gamesa to install six turbines on the Rammeldalsberget wind farm in Västernorrland, central Sweden.”

The balance of plant contractor will be Dawnus Construction from Swansea. The total capital expenditure for New Albion Wind Farm will be £19 million. Debt financing is provided by Nord/LB, who has acted as sole mandated lead arranger. All generated power will be sold to Statkraft under a 15 year Power Purchase Agreement. Construction services will be provided by PLY Energy.

Initial ground investigations and other construction preparation works on site have been undertaken and work to install the wind turbines and supporting site infrastructure are due to continue in January 2015. The project is scheduled to be fully operational by January 2016.