EBRD lends Enerjisa Üretim up to $150 million to refinance short-term debt
The loan to the Sabancı and E.ON joint venture is tied to sustainability targets, but the EBRD did not publish the targets, the tenor or the pricing.
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The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is providing a sustainability-linked loan of up to $150 million to Enerjisa Üretim, one of Türkiye's largest independent power producers, to replace short-term debt with long-term funding, the bank said on 8 October.
The borrower, Enerjisa Enerji Üretim A.Ş., used that short-term debt to fund renewable energy investments, and the EBRD said the refinancing will help it strengthen its balance sheet and continue its renewable expansion programme. The loan is tied to sustainability targets: the company has committed to increasing its installed renewable capacity and reducing its carbon dioxide emissions, the release said. The bank did not publish the targets themselves, the margin adjustment attached to them, the tenor or the pricing.
Who owns the borrower
Enerjisa Üretim is owned in equal shares by Hacı Ömer Sabancı Holding and the German utility E.ON, a structure in place since E.ON completed its entry as a 50 per cent partner in April 2013, the company's website says. The borrower is therefore a joint venture between a Turkish conglomerate and a European utility rather than a subsidiary of either.
The EBRD puts the company's installed capacity at about 4.7 gigawatts across 37 power plants, with hydro, wind and solar generation alongside thermal assets, the release says. The company's own homepage describes more than 4,500 MW of installed capacity from five technologies, and lists a 1,000 MW YEKA-2 allocation and a 500 MW wind storage pre-licence among its projects.
Why refinance now
The release frames the deal as a balance-sheet transaction as much as a new-build one. Replacing short-term borrowing with long-term funding lengthens the company's debt profile at a time when it is still adding renewable capacity, and the EBRD also linked the deal to Türkiye's energy security through additional domestic renewable generation.
Mert Yaycıoğlu, Enerjisa Üretim's deputy chief executive, said in the statement: "Our collaboration with the EBRD is an important part of our long-term financing strategy and reflects the strength of the partnerships we have built with leading international financial institutions." He added: "At Enerjisa Üretim, we remain focused on combining financial discipline with sustainable growth."
Harry Boyd-Carpenter, managing director of the EBRD's sustainable infrastructure group, said: "By combining long-term financing with clear renewable energy and emissions targets, the project will strengthen the company's resilience, support new capacity and contribute to greater energy security."
The EBRD has financed Enerjisa Üretim's wind power projects in 2012, 2023 and 2025, the bank said. It describes itself as a key institutional investor in Türkiye, with more than €25 billion committed since 2009, largely in the private sector.
Two Enerjisa loans in five weeks
The generation loan follows a separate EBRD deal with Enerjisa Enerji, the distribution company, announced on 2 September. That was a $207 million loan to modernise and expand networks in the Baskent, Ayedas and Toroslar regions, backed by a guarantee under the European Union's EFSD+ Hi-Bar programme, according to the EBRD. The bank said it was the first electricity distribution project supported under that guarantee programme, and that Enerjisa Enerji serves about a quarter of Türkiye's population.
Taken together, the two announcements put up to $357 million of EBRD lending, counting the generation facility at its $150 million ceiling, into Enerjisa-branded companies since the start of September. Enerjisa Enerji's chief financial officer, Philipp Ulbrich, said in the September release that the financing reflected the company's strategy of long-term and diversified funding.
For boards and investors, three questions remain open: which key performance indicators were chosen, how ambitious they are against the company's existing plans, and how much the pricing moves if they are missed. None of those terms is in the public release, and the EBRD did not say whether other lenders are refinancing alongside it or how much short-term debt the company carries in total.