Dong Energy Sale Raises €700 Million

---

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Dong Energy's (Fredericia, Denmark) aggressive asset stripping has seen the company raise more than €700 million ($913 million) in the past week from the sale of onshore wind and hydropower plants.

The company has sold its onshore wind assets in Denmark to Danish energy company SE and the Danish pension fund, PFA, in a deal worth approximately €102 million ($132 million). Dong's wind portfolio comprised a total of 272 wind turbines with a total installed capacity of 196 megawatts (MW). The turbines are located at around 80 different sites in Denmark with an average operational track record of 16 years. The business includes a Danish organisation consisting of approximately 18 employees, who will be employed by the purchasing company.

Dong also just announced that it has signed an agreement with Voimapiha AB, a consortium of three Finnish energy companies, to sell its entire ownership stake of 25.673% in the Swedish hydropower company, Kraftgården AB. It has owned Kraftgården AB as a joint venture with Vattenfall since 1994. Kraftgården AB owns and operates seven hydropower plants along the Swedish river Indalsälven, with a total capacity of 626 MW. The sale is valued at €605 million ($789 million). Kraftgården AB was Dong's only hydropower project.

"With the divestment of our stake in this Swedish hydro power company, we are taking another significant step towards the realisation of our financial action plan," explained Henrik Poulsen, CEO of Dong Energy. "I am therefore very satisfied that this agreement is now in place so that we can concentrate even more on our core business."

Regarding the Danish wind sell-off, Poulsen added: "Going forward our competences and capital will be deployed in offshore wind where we have a strong and differentiated competitive platform".

Dong plains to invest over €4 billion ($5.2 billion) between 2013 and 2014 in energy projects, primarily offshore wind projects. In March, the company laid out its investment strategy to 2020, where it stated that it plans to quadruple its offshore capacity from the current total of 1,700 MW to 6,500 MW by the end of the decade.

In March, Dong took ownership of the U.K.'s first dedicated offshore wind terminal in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The €58 million ($76 million) offshore wind terminal has been handed over by Belfast Harbour (Belfast) in preparation for the U.K.'s largest rollout of offshore windfarms. The harbour will first support the development of the West of Duddon Sands windfarm in the Irish Sea, a 389 MW project being built jointly by Dong and ScottishPower Renewables (SPR) (Glasgow, Scotland), part of Spanish energy giant, Iberdrola SA (MCE:IBE) (Bilbao, Spain). For additional information, see March 1, 2013, article - U.K. gets First Offshore Wind Terminal .

Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, and eight offices outside of North America, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle™, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities.