Moray West, part of the Ocean Winds portfolio, has secured £95.5m from Barclays to support the next phase of the project’s construction, as part of a wider syndicated £2bn loan which closed in April.
The wind farm, 22km off the coast of the Moray Firth, is expected to supply around half of Scotland’s electricity, generating enough power for up to 1.33 million homes and saving around 1.1 million tonnes of CO2 emissions by the time the project completes in 2025.
Barclays acted as a sole pre-hedge execution for the project executing interest rate, inflation and foreign exchange hedges, protecting the project and its stakeholders from adverse market movements in a volatile macroeconomic backdrop.
Financial close has ensured that the project can move to the next phase of supply chain activity, with installation works due to commence later this year.
Pete Geddes, project director at Moray West, said: “The support of Barclays has contributed to Moray West reaching financial closure, this means we are now on track to commence the next phase of the project which will see the installation of the wind farm in late 2023.
“Our close working relationship with Barclays has given us the support required to meet the UK and Scottish Government renewable energy targets.”
Barclays is one of only seven banks which have supported two project-financed offshore wind farms involved in the Contract for Difference allocation rounds in the UK looking to innovate with sophisticated off-take agreement strategies.
It executed the hedges at the point the project was awarded the Contract for Difference in July 2022 and then syndicated them to the lending banks at financial close.
Jamie Grant, managing director of Barclays Corporate Banking in Scotland, added: “Barclays expertise and sophisticated approach to the financing of such a major development in Scotland’s green economy reinforces our ability to support key clients in the renewables sector which look to innovate with revenue off-take strategies.
“With the commodity cost escalations that have been experienced recently, it is likely that more renewable developers will also consider innovation with their off-take strategies and we are well placed to support projects like Moray West.”
The deal team was led by Neil Fleming, infrastructure and project finance director at Barclays Corporate Banking.
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