London investor enters Mexican solar market with $34.5 million deal

The growing Mexican solar sector last week attracted sizable investment from London-based infrastructure investor InfraRed Capital Partners, which has committed to spend $34.5 million to acquire a 50% stake each in two large-scale solar projects.

The greenfield solar parks – Torreoncitos and Rancho el Trece – are each 36 MW is size and located in Northern Mexico.

Construction is penciled in for completion on both by the end of this year. InfraRed Capital Partners’ stake is being acquired from Spanish contractor Bester Energy, while Invex Infrastructura – a Mexico-based business partner of InfraRed – will retain the remaining 50% equity.

Once the solar projects are complete, Ammper – a power distribution and trading business – will contract the power out to commercial and industrial customers.

A further fund owned by InfraRed Capital Partners has acquired a 25% interest in eight additional solar projects being built by Bester Energy. These solar plants comprise a cluster of three individual arrays at a site called Ocampo, and a larger cluster of five installations at Ahumada. Together, their cumulative capacity is an additional 36 MW.

Mexico's booming solar sector is on course to become the poster child of PV in Latin America in 2017, and has begun to attract foreign interest from a broad span of the globe.