Partners Group has sold its last 10 percent of the Borssele III/IV offshore wind farm to Octopus Energy. It is the third sale in a year. Together they unwind a 45 percent position the firm took before a single turbine stood in the Dutch North Sea. The striking thing is not the exit. It is how consistently the buyers priced it.
Key takeaways
- Partners Group agreed on 19 September 2023 to sell its remaining 10 percent stake in the 731.5 MW Borssele III/IV offshore wind farm in the Netherlands to Octopus Energy Generation. Enerdatics records the transaction value at $220 million, a figure the parties did not disclose.
- The Octopus Energy sale completed Partners Group's divestment of the 45 percent Borssele III/IV stake it agreed to acquire in January 2018, for a consideration Enerdatics understands to be $375 million.
- Partners Group sold the Borssele III/IV stake in three steps: 20 percent to Swiss Life Asset Managers in September 2022, 15 percent to Nuveen Infrastructure in July 2023, and the final 10 percent to Octopus Energy in September 2023.
- Grossed up to 100 percent, the Nuveen and Octopus stakes in Borssele III/IV both value the wind farm at about $2.2 billion, or $3.01 million per MW.
- Borssele III/IV has 77 Vestas V164 turbines of 9.5 MW each, began operating in 2021, and sells 50 percent of its output under utility PPAs with Shell and Eneco, 38 percent under the Dutch SDE+ feed-in tariff and 12 percent under a corporate PPA with Microsoft.
How did Partners Group get from 45 percent to zero?
In three sales over twelve months, after holding the position for more than four years. Partners Group agreed to buy into Borssele III/IV in January 2018, when the project was ready to build. That purchase made it the controlling shareholder alongside Shell, Eneco, Mitsubishi's Diamond Generating Europe and Van Oord. Construction finished on 26 November 2020 and the wind farm began operating in 2021.
The sell-down began about eighteen months after operations started. In September 2022 Partners Group sold 20 percent to Swiss Life Asset Managers, keeping 25 percent. In July 2023 it sold 15 percent to Nuveen Infrastructure, keeping 10 percent. In September 2023 the last 10 percent went to Octopus Energy Generation. Rothschild & Co. advised Partners Group on the sales as financial adviser and Clifford Chance as legal adviser.
The shareholder group after the final sale includes Shell, Eneco, INPEX, Luxcara, Swiss Life Asset Managers, Glennmont Partners from Nuveen, and Octopus Energy Generation.
What did the buyers pay per MW?
Almost exactly the same, sale after sale. A small stake price means little until it is scaled up to the whole asset, because $220 million for 10 percent and $330 million for 15 percent look like different deals. Grossed up to 100 percent, both imply a value of about $2.2 billion for the wind farm, or $3.01 million per MW.
The same number appears outside Partners Group's own sales. In January 2022 Luxcara bought Van Oord's 10 percent of the Blauwwind consortium behind Borssele III/IV for $222.5 million. Grossed up, that is $3.04 million per MW. Three separate buyers, across 20 months, landed within about 1 percent of each other. Only the Swiss Life sale has no recorded value.
Against the entry price the change is large. Enerdatics understands Partners Group's 2018 consideration for 45 percent to have been $375 million. Grossed up, that implies about $833 million for the whole project, or $1.14 million per MW, at the ready-to-build stage. The later figure is roughly 2.6 times higher. That comparison is not a return calculation. The 2018 price bought equity before construction, and the record does not show how much further capital each shareholder put in to build the wind farm.
Why do buyers agree so closely on the value?
Because most of the revenue is already fixed. Borssele III/IV receives $63.27 per MWh under the Dutch SDE+ scheme for its first 15 years of operation. SDE+ is the Dutch subsidy that tops up market revenue for renewable generators. On top of that, Shell and Eneco each buy half the power under 15-year PPAs, and Eneco has a 15-year PPA with Microsoft for 90 MW to supply its Dutch data centres.
Leap's record splits the routes to market at 50 percent utility PPA, 38 percent feed-in tariff and 12 percent corporate PPA. With long contracts, known counterparties and an operating asset generating about 3,000 GWh a year, there is little left for bidders to disagree about. Two buyers looking at the same contracted cash flows tend to arrive at the same number.
Enerdatics records 23 Dutch offshore wind transactions between January 2018 and December 2024, of which nine carry a value. The operating asset comparables cluster tightly. Borssele III/IV stakes price at $3.01 to $3.04 million per MW on a 100 percent basis. The only other operating Dutch print of scale is Norges Bank's 50 percent of Orsted's 752 MW Borssele I/II in April 2021 at $1.63 billion, which grosses up to $4.34 million per MW. The remaining priced deals are for projects still in development, such as TotalEnergies' 50 percent of the 795 MW OranjeWind project for $1,272 million in July 2024.
What does the deal signal for Dutch offshore wind?
It signals that operating Dutch offshore wind trades as a contracted yield product, and that the pool of buyers for it is deep. An infrastructure manager, Luxcara and an energy supplier each paid the same price per MW within 20 months. Nuveen bought for its European Core Renewable Infrastructure strategy, the same brownfield vehicle behind Nuveen's later purchase of a German solar park with a 20-year EEG tariff.
For Octopus, the stake fits a stated plan to invest $20 billion in offshore wind globally. It already owned the neighbouring 19 MW Borssele V demonstration project, bought from a Van Oord-led consortium in June 2022. Octopus has kept buying minority interests in operating wind from long-term holders, as in its later purchase of a stake in a 107.1 MW French wind portfolio.
For Partners Group, the sequence shows a private markets investor recycling capital from a de-risked asset. The same Nuveen platform has also been active in German offshore wind, including Glennmont's purchase of half of Orsted's Gode Wind 3.
Frequently asked questions
Who bought Partners Group's last stake in Borssele III/IV?Octopus Energy Generation agreed on 19 September 2023 to buy Partners Group's remaining 10 percent stake in the 731.5 MW Borssele III/IV offshore wind farm. Completion was subject to customary regulatory approvals.
What is Borssele III/IV worth per MW?Grossed up to 100 percent, the 2023 sales of 15 percent to Nuveen and 10 percent to Octopus both value the wind farm at about $2.2 billion, or $3.01 million per MW.
Who owns Borssele III/IV now?After the sale, the shareholders include Shell, Eneco, INPEX, Luxcara, Swiss Life Asset Managers, Glennmont Partners from Nuveen, and Octopus Energy Generation.
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