3SUN, UniCredit and Sace: 560 million euro project financing with green backing for solar panel Gigafactory in Italy

• 3SUN, an Enel Green Power company, has signed the non-recourse financing agreement with UniCredit, partially backed by SACE, to finance the expansion of the largest solar panel factory in Italy
• The factory's production capacity is set to increase 15-fold from the current 200 MW/year to 3 GW by July 2024
• With the TANGO (iTaliAN pv Giga factOry) project, 3SUN in Catania, Sicily, is set to become Europe's largest factory of high-performance bifacial photovoltaic modules
• The project will promote the latest generation of high-efficiency solar technology in Europe and help reduce the continent's energy dependence.

3SUN, an Enel Green Power company, and UniCredit, acting as Structuring Mandated Lead Arranger, Global Coordinator and Bookrunner, have signed the project financing agreement for a maximum amount of 560 million euros, divided between a 475 million euro senior term loan and an 85 million euro VAT loan, to finance the expansion of 3Sun's solar panel factory in Catania, Sicily.

The senior term loan is partially counter-guaranteed by SACE, the Italian export credit agency, through the Green Guarantee aimed at pursuing the environmental objective of climate change mitigation as part of Italy's Green New Deal.

The investment will contribute to the development of TANGO (iTaliAN pv Giga factOry), an industrial-scale manufacturing plant for innovative, sustainable, high-performance photovoltaic (PV) modules at 3Sun. In line with the agreement, the expansion of the factory will result in a 15-fold increase in its capacity to 3 GW per year from the current 200 MW. The 3 GW production plant is expected to be fully operational by July 2024, after starting with the first 400 MW in September 2023, making 3Sun the largest gigawatt-scale factory in Europe producing high-performance bifacial PV modules.

The factory is expected to increase direct and indirect local employment by about 1,000 jobs by 2024, serving as a catalyst for the revitalization of a European PV value chain and contributing to the reduction of the continent's energy dependence.

3Sun's production will include bifacial heterojunction (B-HJT) photovoltaic cells that can respond to light on both front and back surfaces, thus capturing more solar irradiation. Through an ambitious research and development program, the photovoltaic panels will be further developed to also incorporate a structure called "Tandem," which uses two stacked cells that allow more light to be captured than single-cell structures, producing higher overall efficiency. The combination of bifacial photovoltaic panels and "Tandem" cell structure will allow the photovoltaic modules to exceed 30 percent efficiency, providing higher average energy production.

The 3 GW of panels that will be produced annually by the Gigafactory can generate up to about 5.5 TWh of renewable electricity per year, which from a sustainability perspective has the potential to avoid the equivalent of nearly 25 million tons of CO₂ in their first ten years of operation. Similarly, the production generated by the Gigafactory's panels has the potential to avoid the purchase of nearly 1.2 billion cubic meters of gas per year, replaced by internally generated renewable energy.

The Gigafactory was designed and is being built following sustainable and circular best practices, increasing the use of environmentally friendly recycled materials as well as reducing energy and resource consumption.

In addition, the factory has a strong commitment to research and development in collaboration with international research centers, industry-leading companies, and start-ups, with the goal of developing new recycling processes for the management of end-of-life PV modules through the recovery and reuse of materials, in a fully circular perspective. For example, the use of highly automated procedures and sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms will greatly improve the control of manufacturing processes, leading to a significant reduction in waste.

Francesco Starace, CEO and General Manager of Enel said: "With the signing of this long-term project financing agreement we have reached another important milestone for the Gigafactory, confirming the robustness and attractiveness of the initiative. The solar module factory we are building in Catania will be at the forefront in terms of innovative technology and automation of industrial processes and will contribute to the EU's goal of achieving 40 percent energy consumption from renewable sources by 2030, as well as help reduce energy dependence. With this project we are demonstrating the feasibility and scalability, including financially, of a sustainable industrial model that can be replicated for other factories of this type to be developed in the coming years in other countries as well."

Andrea Orcel, CEO of UniCredit said, "We are pleased to have made a decisive contribution to the success of this transaction, which will enable our country to have a high-tech production facility of a size that will help significantly reduce dependence on fossil fuels. In 2022, UniCredit generated €11.4 billion in new green and sustainability-related loans. For UniCredit, sustainable finance is essential to supporting the energy transition, providing concrete solutions to accelerate the journey of our customers and the communities in which we operate toward a more equitable and sustainable future. With Enel, we are part of the CEO Alliance, the action tank in Europe focused on driving decarbonization and digitization on the continent through targeted collective initiatives. This transaction further demonstrates the tangible benefits of our collaboration on different levels."

Alessandra Ricci, CEO of SACE, said, "We are proud to continue supporting the Enel Group, this time in Italy, and we are pleased to do so together with UniCredit for the expansion of Italy's largest solar panel factory. A strategic initiative that will contribute to the reduction of our country's energy dependence, developing domestic production in a high-tech sector and increasing employment in the Sicilian territory. This intervention is a new concrete step forward consistent with the objectives of the Insieme 2025 industrial plan and confirms our commitment, for a total of 3 billion euros in green guarantees in 2022 alone, in the implementation of the Green New Deal to support investments by Italian companies in technologies for the ecological transition." 

Rome | Milan, 13 February 2023

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