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First
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RidgeWind was the first platform developed by members of the Asper team on behalf of HgCapital renewable energy funds. In 2004, we identified UK onshore wind as a sector with strong fundamentals: a good wind resource combined with the country’s structural need for new sources of electricity.

The investment strategy was focused on creating value through developing wind projects and aggregating them into a portfolio of critical scale. We backed RidgeWind, an independent developer of greenfield wind energy projects. Under the HgCapital fund’s ownership, RidgeWind established and grew a substantial project pipeline, obtaining planning permission for 5 wind farms for a total of 177 MW in the challenging British planning environment.

We further expanded the portfolio through selected acquisitions of pre-construction and operating projects, arranging project finance and construction, growing the platform to a total size of 260 MW. This helped us deliver economies of scale in procurement and operations.

We built RidgeWind into one of the UK’s largest and best-performing independent wind businesses and in 2012, we saw an opportunity to crystallise value created for our clients in a rising power price environment. We executed a successful exit, selling the portfolio to MEAG (the real asset investment vehicle of insurance company Munich RE) and UK investor Blue Energy.