The non-recourse senior loan facility, which is for about EUR60m, will cover up to 84% of estimated project costs with a maturity of 18 years following construction.
The financing portfolio includes a total of 17.8MW in operation or under construction in Italy, under which the first project, Etrion Lazio, includes the Borgo Piave 3.5MW park and the Rio Martino 1.7MW park, both completed in December 2010.
The second project, Helios ITA-3, includes two 5MW parks located in Puglia, and the parks are now under construction with ABB and are expected to be completed in the third quarter.
The final project in the portfolio, Nettuno, is a 2.6MW park under construction in Lazio with Phoenix Solar, with the completion expected to be in the third quarter.
The five ground-based solar PV plants are expected to produce a total of about 28 million kWh of electricity per year and almost nine million euros per year of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
The solar parks benefit from the Italian feed-in-tariff regime, which is a premium purchase price for solar electricity that is guaranteed by the Italian government for 20 years from the start of operations.
Etrion CEO Marco Northland said the latest tranche will allow the company to pre-pay the EUR28m bridge loan from the Lundin family when the company complete 13MW under construction in the third quarter.
Etrion acquires, develops, builds, owns and operates solar power plants.
