Enery Power Holding, a company on the CEE green electricity market, signed a senior term loan and revolving credit facilities agreement for the acquisition of the 81 megawatts renewable energy portfolio held by Jade Power Trust in Romania. The facility was arranged by Banca Comercială Română SA and Erste Group Bank AG, both acting as mandated lead arrangers and hedge providers, while Banca Comercială Română also acted as a facility, security agent and account bank.
The multi-asset portfolio purchased by Enery Power Group has a total installed capacity of 81 megawatts, and includes two wind farms in Dobrogea region, two photovoltaic systems and two micro-hydroelectric power plants. With this acquisition, Enery's portfolio of operations in Romania grows to 273 megawatts and its total production increases to 375 gigawatt hours.
”Romania has the potential to become a major player in the clean energy technologies sector, and our aim is to provide relevant funding for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. The financing provided to Enery Power Holding is a positive sign for our market. It shows that there is a growing appetite for green-energy financing under rapidly changing conditions that will increase the resilience of our energy industry to geopolitical challenges, reducing fossil fuels dependency and resources consumption in general”, stated Bogdan Cernescu, Managing Director, Head of Corporate Coverage BCR.
The credit facility, which has a maturity of 11 years, confirms the support that BCR and Erste Group are providing for the surging demand for green and sustainable energy projects in the region, in which Romania is a key market for renewable energy investors.
“The energy sector in Europe finds itself at a crossroads. At Erste Group, our primary aim has always been to support the economic well-being of our core markets across CEE. An integral part of this involves serving as a catalyst for the region's energy transition, even in times of great market uncertainty”, said Radu Moldovan, Industry Lead Energy and Utilities at Erste Group.
Clifford Chance Badea acted as the exclusive legal advisor of the lenders, with a team including Nadia Badea – partner, Andreea Sisman – counsel, Madalina Mailat and Gabriel Toma – senior associate, and Nicolae Grasu – lawyer. Schoenherr acted as Enery's legal counsel in connection with this financing, with a team including Robert Bachner – partner, Adina Damaschin – counsel, Silviu Lazăr and Loredana Barbu - attorneys at law.
“This transaction represents a new milestone which marks the diversification of our business into the onshore wind and hydro generation and further strengthens our position in Romania. Our portfolio in Romania now comprehends 11 power plants operating under 3 different technologies enabling us to offer a diversified clean energy mix in Romania. Erste and BCR acted as our financial partners supporting us in this achievement and displaying strong trust and good cooperation between our teams”, commented Richard König, CEO and Lukas Nemec, COO of Enery.
Enery, founded in 2019, is focused to generate clean electricity at the lowest possible cost, make it affordable and accessible for industries and households, and help Europe regain its competitiveness as an industrial region.
Banca Comercială Română (BCR), a member of the Erste Group, is one of the largest financial groups in Romania, including universal banking operations (retail, corporate & investment banking, treasury and capital markets) as well as leasing, private pension and home banking businesses.
BCR offers a full range of financial products and services through a network of 18 business centres and 16 mobile offices dedicated to companies and 321 retail units located in most of the country's cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants. BCR is Romania's No.1 bank in the transaction banking market, with BCR customers having the largest national network of ATMs and multifunctional machines - almost 1,800 machines, about 11,300 POS and full banking services through Internet banking, Mobile banking, Phone-banking and E-commerce.
Erste Group is the leading financial services provider in the eastern part of the EU. Its ca. 45,000 employees serve nearly 16 million customers in over 2,000 branches in 7 countries (Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Croatia and Serbia). For the period 1-9/2022, Erste Group had €335 billion in total assets, posted a net profit of €1.65 billion and had a common equity tier 1 ratio (CRR, pro forma) of 14.2%.
