Japan's largest trading company Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) announced the divestment of shares in Diamond Green Limited, with 30% to be transferred to The Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc (KEPCO) and 20% to Mitsubishi UFJ Lease & Finance Company Limited (MUL).
Diamond Green is an intermediate holding company wholly owned by Diamond Generating Europe, which itself is a wholly owned subsidiary of MC based in the UK. DGE has been MC’s executing arm for the Moray East Offshore Windfarm Project located in the North Sea, 22 km off the coast of Scotland.
With this transaction, KEPCO and MUL now join Moray East Offshore Windfarm’s existing shareholders DGE, EDP Renewables of Spain and ENGIE of France to further develop the Moray East Offshore Windfarm project.
MC also wishes to announce that the project has entered into a project finance agreement with several banks, including the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC). This project will now move into the construction stage, with commercial operation expected for 2022.
DGE has established a special team of highly qualified in-house professionals which is exclusively dedicated to managing offshore wind power projects, including the asset of the 130 MW Luchterduinen Offshore Wind Warm which started operating in the Netherlands in 2015,the construction asset of the 370 MW Norther Offshore Wind Farm in Belgium and the 732 MW Borssele III/IV Offshore Wind Farm in the Netherlands.
The large-scale introduction of offshore wind has taken off more in Europe than it has elsewhere. This proliferation of offshore wind power comes with successive technological improvement, which also means that the capacity of wind turbines and the scale of wind farms can get bigger, ultimately making the cost of electricity generated by offshore wind power more competitive.
This ignites momentum for introducing offshore wind power generation in Japan, and Japanese companies, including utilities, are aiming to enter this market. MC’s strategy is to continue its engagement in the offshore wind power generation business while re-profiling assets and optimizing its portfolio through divestment including aiming to be a player in offshore wind power generation in Japan by leveraging the experience gained from project operations in Europe.
The divestment of Diamond Green is consistent with both the needs of Japanese companies and MC’s strategy.