development assets
value
investment
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.
