NTR closes €21.5m finance debt facility for wind farm

Irish investment group NTR has closed a £16.8 million (€21.5m) project finance debt facility to finance the construction of a wind farm in Co Fermanagh.

Ora More is a 15 MW wind farm which is currently under construction. It is expected to be operational by the end of the year.

NTR said the debt facility was secured with Ulster Bank. It is the first of a number of project debt facilities for wind projects under its new €250 million fund.

The Ora More project will deploy six GE 2.5MW turbines and will generate enough electricity to power approximately 13,000 homes with clean energy. NTR has entered into a power purchase agreement with SSE Airtricity, which will have the offtake of the renewable energy generated at the wind farm for a period of 15 years.

"This is the first project financial close since the launch of our new wind fund and we are very pleased to have partnered with Ulster Bank to achieve this important milestone. We expect 2016 to be a very active year for us as we finance and build out a number of projects that we have recently acquired," said NTR's chief financial officer Marie Joyce.

NTR last week announced it has successfully closed a €250 million wind investment fund it recently set up with Legal and General Capital. At around 270MW of capacity, the fund's total equity and project finance capital requirement amounts to approximately €670 million.