Israeli public company Ellomay Capital has announced the purchase of two solar PV sites in the Veneto region in Northern Italy with an aggregate capacity of 12MWp.
The sites, which are fully constructed and operational, were connected to the Italian national grid in August 2011 under the applicable feed-in-tariff.
PV-Tech understandds each site is held by an Italian company wholly-owned by a German company that has recently entered into insolvency proceedings.
Ellomay Capital said the acquisition of the PV sites is expected to nearly double the current production capacity of the company's existing photovoltaic sites in Europe to 25MWp.
The PV sites join the company's eleven existing photovoltaic sites with an aggregate capacity of more than 13MWp. Ten of the existing sites are located in Italy (six in the Puglia region and four in the Marche region), and one, in which the company holds an 85% stake, is in the Cordova region in Spain.
In a statement issued yesterday Ellomay Capital said it expects the annual revenue from the two PV Sites to be approximately Euro 4.7 million (approximately US$ 6.3 million).
Ellomay's assets also include 85% ownership of a PV plant in Spain with a capacity of approximately 2.3MWp, 7.5% indirect holdings in Israeli energy company Dorad (with an option to increase such holdings to 9.375%), Israel's largest private power plant, which is under construction tand is expected to have an aggregate capacity of approximately 800MW (representing approximately 8% of Israel's current electricity consumption), and certain rights in a few oil and gas exploration and drilling licenses in the Mediterranean sea.
Ran Fridrich, CEO of Ellomay, described the purchase of the two solar PV sites as "an excellent transaction" that proves the company's business development abilities. He said it also underlined Ellomay's ability to locate transactions below market values using its flexible structure and expertise in transaction analysis.
He said: "We will acquire the projects from a German company in insolvency proceedings for an attractive price due to our available cash and the negotiation skills of Hemi Raphael, one of our board members."