Alcazar Energy Partners just financed 131 megawatts of wind against a buyer nobody has named.
Alcazar reached financial close on the first phase of the Štip wind farm in North Macedonia, Windtech International reported on 14 September. Twenty-one turbines at 6.25 MW each, 131.25 MW in total, EUR 180 million of investment. Senior debt of roughly EUR 115 million came from the EBRD, the IFC and Erste Group Bank, with Sparkasse Bank AD Skopje supplying a separate local VAT facility. Revenue rests on a long-term offtake agreement with an investment-grade international corporation that the announcement does not name. The plant will run without government offtake support. Phase one is the first of three in a cluster planned at up to 396 MW across Štip, Radoviš and Karbinci.
Why it matters
Two development finance institutions and a commercial bank underwrote senior debt against a corporate offtaker rather than a sovereign-backed tariff. We read this as the structure that financed much of European onshore wind, and Alcazar has now executed it.
What it means for MENA
The wind offtakers we write about here are mostly state entities. Alcazar has now signed the other kind of contract, and its credit team holds a live comparison between a ministry’s covenant and a corporation’s. In our read, what made Štip financeable was a private buyer willing to sign long term. Building a market that produces such buyers is slower work than building the turbines, and it decides who gets to be the counterparty on the next one.
