juwi Wind Secures Financing for Minnesota Wind Farm

juwi Wind has secured financing for the Community Wind South project, a 30 MW wind farm in southwestern Minnesota currently being constructed. The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2012.

Deutsche Zentral-Genossenschaftbank, or DZ Bank AG, the fourth biggest bank in Germany with a large branch in New York, has been the mandated lead arranger and provided the construction, ITC cash grant bridge and term loans. KfW IPEX also joined the transaction as a lender.

Jeff Chester from Kaye Scholer and his team represented juwi Wind, and Rob Goldberg from Mayer Brown and his team represented DZ Bank AG.

“juwi’s long standing relationship with DZ Bank in Germany since the late 1990’s aided in the completion and terms of this deal for one of our USA projects,” stated Michael Rucker, juwi Wind USA CEO.

The power will be sold to Xcel Energy under a long-term purchase agreement.

The project features 15 REpower MM92 turbines with 100 meter towers, the tallest in Minnesota, to date.

“juwi was very pleased about the smooth project finance process of this unique project, which has been led from the banking side by Steve Bissonnette with DZ Bank,” commented Heiko Wehrhahn, Head of Project Finance Americas for juwi.

juwi Wind, LLC is a subsidiary of the juwi Group, a major international developer of renewable energy projects. juwi has been designing, building and operating plants that harness renewable energy since 1996, and to date juwi has installed approximately 650 wind turbines worldwide at 85 sites, producing a total output of approximately 1250MW. The company is named for CEOs Fred Jung and Matthias Willenbacher and based in Worrstadt, Germany with USA headquarters in Boulder, Colorado.

www.juwinorthamerica.com