Lyceum Solar wins at the IJInvestor Awards 2024
28 November 2024
We won!
GLIL Infrastructure and Bluefield Solar Income Fund (BSIF) are the proud winners of the Joint Venture Acquisition of the Year award at the IJInvestor Awards 2024 held last night at The Savoy, London.
We believe this was a landmark transaction for the industry, due to its multi-staged and multi-faceted nature. The transaction required investment and collaboration across the breadth of the two distinct businesses, a listed fund and a pension fund backed private vehicle, both of which are uniquely but complementarily positioned by the UK’s push toward net zero. This can be evidenced by the scale and density of Phase 1 of the transaction, which blended the acquisition of an operational portfolio with new-build construction.
The transaction was inclusive of 58 separate sites of largely Feed-In-Tariff assets, all of which had to be diligenced and evaluated amid market volatility. Phase 2 saw the sale of 50% of a portfolio of BSIF’s Renewable Obligation Scheme assets into the Joint Venture. Phase 3, which is underway, is the construction of a diverse portfolio of solar and battery assets, in part supported by the Contract for Difference support mechanism.
The result is the creation of one of the largest, and diverse, solar and battery portfolios in the UK. The joint venture is already a major operator in the UK solar market and has the potential to be one of the most important strategic players in the industry as the UK seeks to reach net zero by 2030.
For GLIL, the joint venture has allowed the fund to use capital to acquire a significant portfolio of high quality operational solar assets for the benefit of its members as well as being able to participate in future development work with one of the most experienced operators in the UK market.
For BSIF, the joint venture has enabled the company to maximise the value of its development pipeline, build out a new vehicle in Lyceum Solar, whilst finding an investor in GLIL that shares the same long-term commitment to the decarbonisation of the UK energy markets.
This partnership offers enormous benefits for the UK’s renewable energy ambitions. By working together as proactive partners, GLIL and BSIF can drive construction into solar energy in ways that would not otherwise have been possible.