Merito Partners received a €1M loan for its solar power plant project
Latvian investment company Merito Partners received a €1M loan from Latvian Signet Bank to construct a 2,7 MW solar power plant near Zilupe, in the Ludza district of Latvia.
The power plant will consist of 5K solar panels, which will provide electricity to at least 1,3K households in Zilupe and its surrounding area, and any excess electricity generated will be available to residents of Ludza and other Latvian districts.
Zilupe solar power plant is the first of nine solar power plants, which are planned to be constructed according to the project of one of Merito Partners' funds - Merito Sustainable Energy FUND I. Seven of the plants are scheduled to be realized by the end of this year, and two - in 2024. The new solar power plants are expected to produce at least 70K MW of electricity annually.
In April, Latvian insurance technology company Balcia invested €1M in Merito Sustainable Energy FUND I to develop a solar power project. Merito Partners announced that it had raised a €20M fund to realize this project.
Latvian-based alternative investment fund Merito Partners was established in Riga in 2022 by Mikus Janvars, Mārtiņš Baumanis, and Aigars Kesenfelds. Merito Partners manages Merito Private Equity Fund I, which focuses mostly on financing startups from New Nordics. The average ticket is € 0.5-5M. The first investment of Merito Private Equity Fund was in the Latvian developer of self-service kiosks Tapbox. Merito Partners also manages Merito Sustainable Energy FUND I with a focus on renewable energy investments. The total target size of the two funds is €50M.
Signet Bank was founded in Riga in 1991. The bank’s strategy focuses on providing financing and capital management services to local entrepreneurs and their businesses. Signet Bank’s shareholders are nine Latvian and international private investors, of whom the biggest is Signet Acquisition III (25%), whose sole shareholder is US investor Aleksandrs Solovejs, RIT Group (19.50 %), a Latvian company owned by the Rapoport family, and SIA Reglink (15.93 %), founded by banker Irīna Pīgozne.
