Healey dynasty seals £250m wind farm deal

THE family who pulled off Britain’s biggest property deal will today seal a £250 million agreement to buy a wind farm developer from private equity firm HgCapital.

Blue Energy – which is owned by Mark Healey, son of property developer Eddie Healey – will buy RidgeWind and its two wind farms, along with the planning consents for a further four sites, including Beinneun, near Invergarry, in Inverness-shire.

In December, Scottish Borders Council rejected RidgeWind’s plans to erect turbines at Gilston on the border with Midlothian.

The deal is the second in the past six months for HgCapital, which in August sold its stakes in three other wind farms to insurer Munich Re.

Blue Energy is already building two wind projects in Scotland, with one at Hill of Auquhirie, near Stonehaven, and a single turbine at Tealing, to the north of Dundee.

The company has also constructed the UK’s biggest solar power farm, in Wiltshire, and has unveiled plans for a massive solar site in Ghana.

Blue Energy chief executive Chris Dean said: “We aim to progress further transactions of a similar nature in the wind sector this year.”

Eddie Healey made his fortune in 1999 by selling the Meadowhall shopping centre to British Land for £1.17 billion.

News of the latest deal came a day after a report by accountancy firm PwC found insurers, pension funds and sovereign wealth investors had doubled the amount of cash they have pumped into global renewable energy mergers and acquisitions in the past year.

PETER RANSCOMBE