Orsted has borrowed $571.57 million for Hornsea 3, the 2.9 GW offshore wind farm it is building off the English coast. The lender is not a bank syndicate. It is Norway's state export lender, and the money pays for just two pieces of equipment. That narrow purpose explains who is lending and why.
Key takeaways
- Orsted secured $571.57 million of debt from Eksfin, Export Finance Norway, announced on 18 March 2024, to purchase two transformer platforms for the 2.9 GW Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm in the UK.
- The two Hornsea 3 transformer platforms financed by Eksfin are being bought from Aibel of Norway.
- The Hornsea 3 loan takes Eksfin's total offshore wind financing to nearly $3.1 billion, or EUR 3.5 billion.
- Hornsea 3, in the North Sea off England, began construction in December 2023 and is expected to begin commercial operation by December 2027; Orsted acquired the project from SMart Wind in August 2015.
- Eksfin's only other UK wind debt financing recorded by Enerdatics between January 2023 and June 2025 was $189.1 million to Nexans in April 2023 to develop subsea cables for the Moray West offshore wind farm.
Why is a Norwegian export lender paying for platforms in English waters?
Because the platforms are made in Norway, and supporting Norwegian exports is what Eksfin exists to do. An export credit agency is a state-backed lender that finances overseas purchases of goods from its own country's manufacturers. It lends to the foreign buyer, often on longer terms or keener pricing than banks offer, and the order goes to a domestic supplier.
A transformer platform is the offshore substation of a wind farm. It collects power from the turbines through array cables, raises the voltage, and sends it to shore through export cables. On a project the size of Hornsea 3, these platforms are among the largest and most expensive single items in the build.
So the loan follows the order. Orsted buys two platforms from Aibel, Eksfin finances the purchase, and Norway's supply chain wins the work. The loan arrives nine years after Orsted took over the project, at the point where development spending turns into large equipment orders. The amount appears to be set by the value of the contract, not by the size or revenue of the wind farm. That is why a 2.9 GW project carries a loan of a little over half a billion dollars from this lender rather than several billion.
How does this loan differ from project finance on other UK wind farms?
It is tied to equipment and lent to the developer, whereas the largest UK wind financings are bank loans for whole projects. Project finance, sometimes called non-recourse debt, is a loan repaid only from the revenue of the asset it builds. If the project fails, lenders cannot reach the sponsor's other assets, so they size the loan to the project's contracted income.
Moray West took that route in April 2023, with $2.49 billion of non-recourse project finance from a large group of banks. Inch Cape followed in January 2025 with about $4.37 billion from a syndicate of 22 commercial banks. Hornsea 3's Eksfin loan sits in a different category, alongside Iberdrola's $554.6 million green loan from Citigroup for East Anglia Three in July 2023. Both are funding raised by a large utility for a specific purpose, rather than debt sized to one project's cash flows.
For a developer with a strong balance sheet, the trade-off is control. Borrowing at company level against specific purchases avoids the lender covenants and lengthy due diligence of project finance, at the cost of keeping the risk on the parent's books.
What does the loan mean for Hornsea 3's economics?
It likely lowers the cost of one large block of capital spending on a project whose first contract price was low. Hornsea 3's main revenue support is a contract for difference, a UK government contract that tops up or claws back revenue so the generator receives a fixed strike price for each megawatt hour. In July 2022 Orsted won a contract for difference in the fourth allocation round at $44.56 per MWh for a 2,852 MW share of the project. In September 2024 it secured another in the sixth round at $71.24 per MWh for a 1,080 MW share.
The first strike price was set in July 2022, and the second, awarded two years later, came in about 60 percent higher. Any saving on financing, including the terms an export credit agency can offer, helps close the gap between that price and the cost of building. Construction started in December 2023, three months before the Eksfin loan was announced, and commercial operation is expected by December 2027.
Enerdatics records 14 debt financings for wind in the United Kingdom announced between January 2023 and June 2025. The Eksfin loan for Hornsea 3 is the third largest, behind Inch Cape and Moray West, and just ahead of the East Anglia Three loan. Two of the 14 come from Eksfin, and both are tied to specific equipment, platforms in one case and subsea cables in the other, rather than to a whole wind farm.
What does the deal signal for Hornsea 3 and Orsted?
It shows Orsted funding Hornsea 3 piece by piece rather than through one large project loan, and then bringing in partners. In November 2025 Orsted agreed to sell a 50 percent stake in Hornsea 3, including a 300 MW, 600 MWh battery, to Apollo Global Management and La Caisse for $6.5 billion, a deal covered in our post on Apollo and La Caisse's Hornsea 3 stake. In May 2026 Mubadala Capital agreed to buy a minority stake from Apollo for $325 million.
That sequence follows a familiar Orsted pattern: build with its own balance sheet, then sell half to financial investors once construction risk is falling, as it did when Glennmont bought half of Gode Wind 3. Export credit can fit that model because it funds the early, heavy equipment spend at company level rather than loading the project itself with bank debt that a later buyer would have to inherit.
Frequently asked questions
What did Eksfin finance on Hornsea 3? Eksfin, Export Finance Norway, provided $571.57 million of debt to Orsted to buy two transformer platforms from Norway's Aibel for the 2.9 GW Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm.
When will Hornsea 3 start operating? Construction began in December 2023 and commercial operation is expected by December 2027.
How much offshore wind has Eksfin financed? With the Hornsea 3 loan, Eksfin's total offshore wind financing reached nearly $3.1 billion, or EUR 3.5 billion.
Ready to get deal-ready answers in seconds? Try Enerdatics Leap AI and access verified intelligence across M&A, financings, PPAs, projects, and energy market developments through natural language.
