Strategic View:
Renewable energy platform NeXtWind has closed a €1.8 billion syndicated debt financing. The club deal was arranged by a consortium including KfW IPEX-Bank and LBBW. This financing transforms NeXtWind from a project developer into an institutional-grade platform, allowing it to repower aging wind farms across Germany and improve the German energy mix.
Full Story:
NeXtWind, a Berlin-based renewable energy company, has secured a landmark €1.8 billion syndicated debt facility. This transaction is a pivotal moment for the German “Energiewende” (energy transition). The consortium of lenders, led by state-backed KfW IPEX-Bank and commercial lender LBBW, structured the deal to support the acquisition and “repowering”* of aging wind assets.
The deal structure shifts NeXtWind from fragmented “project finance” to a holistic “platform finance” model. In a typical project finance deal, each wind farm is funded separately. In this club deal, the lenders are backing the entire NeXtWind platform, providing a flexible credit facility that allows the company to buy old turbines, replace them with modern, efficient ones, and plug them into the grid without renegotiating debt for every site.
Consequently, this lowers the cost of capital and speeds up deployment. The syndicate includes a mix of commercial banks and institutional lenders, reflecting the deep appetite for green yield. For the lenders, the risk is diversified across a portfolio of assets rather than a single wind farm.
Why It Matters:
This is the future of green financing. Moving from “Project” to “Platform” financing via syndicated debt is essential to deploy capital at the speed required for Net Zero. NeXtWind is the blueprint for repowering Europe’s aging renewable fleet.
Source(s):
NeXtWind closes €1.8 billion syndicated debt financing
