CHINT and Maoneng have announced their partnership at an introduction ceremony on Wednesday 5 June 2019 at the SNEC expo hosted in Shanghai by signing a term sheet to acquire and co-develop utility-scale solar projects in Australia.
The parties will be establishing a joint venture company in Australia, with CHINT taking a majority 60% shareholding and Maoneng having a 40% shareholding. CHINT and Maoneng are looking to acquire and co-develop projects with an enterprise value between $60m-$200m. The parties will not be restricted to traditional project finance in developing the projects, and may seek to develop projects on a pure merchant basis. The JV aims to develop a project pipeline with combined capacity of at least 150MWac by 2019 and 500MWac by 2021.
At the conference, Dr. Chuan Lu, CEO of CHINT Solar/Astronergy and Mr. Morris Zhou, CEO and Chairman of Maoneng have shared their ambition towards building a renewable future for Australia with the development of largescale renewable energy infrastructure.
"We are very glad that our capability in production and downstream businesses has been well recognized from Maoneng. Maoneng plays an important role in Australian Solar market and the partnership between two companies also marks a new milestone for both parties. We will put more efforts together with Maoneng in developing the Australian market." Commented by Dr. Lu, Chuan, the CEO of CHINT Solar/Astronergy.
With the execution of the definitive agreements expected to be finalised shortly, CHINT and Maoneng's strong alliance will benefit Australia's energy industry as a whole and keep the country on track to generate 50% of its energy consumption with renewables by 2050.
