Meerwind issues EUR 978 M in bonds to refinance existing bank debt for offshore wind

Green Giraffe has announced its client WindMW and its shareholder Blackstone for the successful placement of bonds worth EUR 978 M to refinance the 288 MW Meerwind offshore wind farm in Germany.

The bonds were issued on 17 December 2015 to a group of around 20 international institutional investors and benefit from investment grade ratings from the three main rating agencies.

Proceeds are mainly used to prepay around EUR 850 M of existing bank debt which was raised in August 2011 to finance the construction of the project.

Green Giraffe acted as financial advisor to WindMW in 2011 and helped raise EUR 869 M in long term construction facilities, the first transaction to use the KfW programme for offshore wind.

After financial close, Green Giraffe assisted WindMW in liaising with and reporting to the lending group throughout construction which was formally completed in September 2015. As part of the bond refinancing process, Green Giraffe helped WindMW to benchmark the proposed bond option against a restructuring of the existing bank debt.

During the bond refinancing process, Green Giraffe advised WindMW on the interfaces with the existing bank group and helped to achieve a smooth refinancing process.

The offshore wind farms Meerwind Süd and Meerwind Ost are a 288 MW project located in the German Bight in the North Sea 23 km north of the island of Helgoland. The wind farm will consist of 80 wind turbines with a power output of 3,6 MW each. All turbines will be connected to a farm internal transformer platform to which the grid connection will be installed.

The project is owned by WindMW, which is owned by Windland Energieerzeugungs GmbH (20%) and Blackstone (80%).