A superannuation fund servicing the farming sector has bought two more "micro" wind farms in Victoria.
Prime Super now boasts five wind farms in its portfolio, all located in Victoria.
The fund has 143,000 members in the agriculture, healthcare, aged care, education and recruitment industries and manages $6.7 billion in retirement savings.
The latest buys are the small Chepstowe and Maroona wind farms.
The fund already owns the Mortons Lane wind farm (bought in 2021) plus the Ferguson and Diapur wind farms (acquired in 2022).
The small Chepstowe wind farm is located about 30 kilometres west of Ballarat and was completed in 2015 as a three turbine project of six megawatts capacity.
German renewables company BayWa r.e GmbH bought the wind farm from Future Energy and the company was renamed Fezero Pty Ltd.
Fewione Pty Ltd was established to represent the interests of Fezero's own investor group in the Chepstowe and Maroona wind farms.
Maroona wind farm is a two-turbine farm on private farm land about 18km south west of Ararat.
It has a capacity of 6.8 megawatts.
Prime Super's new additions increases the combined generation-capacity across Prime Super's wind energy portfolio to 52 megawatts, said to be enough power for about 40,300 homes.
In comparison, work has just started on the state's biggest wind farm at Rokewood, between Geelong and Ballarat, which will host 215 turbines in its first stage across 16,739ha (41,363 acres) of mostly farm land.
The $2 billion WestWind Energy development is expected to start producing power in the first quarter of 2025.
The 1300 megawatt project is intended to provide green electricity to more than 750,000 households, the equivalent of every home in regional Victoria.
Prime Super says the two new wind farms enables it "to further leverage operational efficiencies, through the expansion of its asset and financial management frameworks, while providing the benefits of scale, and increasing its facilitation of wind energy-generation".
.Prime Super chief executive Lachlan Baird said the fund was looking to further expand its portfolio of climate-positive assets.
"And in doing so build on our history of delivering strong, long-term financial returns for our members," Mr Baird said.
"Prime Super has an extensive portfolio of direct investments that have a track record of excellent long-term investment performance for the members of the fund, and we believe these new wind-energy acquisitions will help us continue to deliver strong performance for our members."
Chris McLennan
ACM national rural property writer based in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria. Career journalist. Multi award winner.
ACM national rural property writer based in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria. Career journalist. Multi award winner.
