A consortium comprising Utilities Trust of Australia (UTA), The Infrastructure Fund and industry super fund Sunsuper is investing A$1.03bn (€640m) to buy an additional 33.5% stake in ElectraNet, a South Australian transmission network company.
The vendor is the Malaysian infrastructure group YTL Corporation, which purchased the ElectraNet stake in 2000 from Macquarie.
The Australian Utilities Trust (AUT) consortium, which has been invested in ElectraNet since 2003, has agreed to buy the additional stake, lifting its holding in ElectraNet from 19.94% to 53.4%. The other shareholder, China’s State Grid, owns 46.6%.
ElectraNet is South Australia’s principal transmission network, delivering electricity to approximately 1.7m South Australians, via its 5,900km of overhead transmission lines, across 200,000sqkm of service area.
YTL Power group managing director Yeoh Seok Hong said the transaction presented his company with the opportunity to realise gains from a mature investment.
Yeoh said the group would deploy proceeds from the sale to strengthen its balance sheet and on viable new ventures that complemented its existing businesses.
“These include, in particular, new investments in solar energy and other renewables, in line with our shift towards more sustainable energy solutions moving forward,” he said in a statement.
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