Category: Business

business

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Vodafone Spain sale green-lit

The five billion euro deal which sees UK-based investment firm Zegona Bidco acquire 100% of Vodafone Spain has been green-lit by the Spanish Government.

Zegona Bidco is a fully owned subsidiary of Zegona Communications.

The deal will be financed with a combination of debt and equity.

To get the deal done, Zegona made a number of undertakings, including service continuity, future investments and financial solvency.

Zegona can use the Vodafone brand in Spain for ten years. 

Spanish minister of Digital Transformation José Luis Escrivá said: “The telecommunications sector is in a moment of profound reorganisation, and it is the obligation of the public powers to guarantee that this strategic service is not only assured, but that it is reinforced when a major business operation occurs.”

The plan is that Vodafone will reach 82% of the population and a total of 2,700 municipalities with its 5G service by the end of this year. This, said Vofafone,  exceeds the committed deployment obligations.

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Massive new green hydrogen plant for Albacete

A huge green hydrogen plant is being planned for the Albacete province in central Spain.

Costing around $3bn, it will consist of a 1GW electrolyser powered by an adjacent wind and solar power farm built on the same site.

Industry figures suggest that such a sized plant will produce around 0.15 million tonnes of hydrogen and three million tonnes of water. This assumes an efficiency of 75% for 8,000 hours per year.

German renewables company PNE is behind the project, which it will operate via its Spanish subsidiary, Kolya-PNE. 

Local media say that land for the site has already been purchased, and Kolya-PNE is currently in talks with the local government bodies to develop the project.

PNE is a major renewables operator and already has more than 6.5GW of wind power projects in Europe, North America and South Africa.

It was back in 2022 when it acquired a majority stake in Spanish solar developer Kolya. 

The term green hydrogen is a label for a process which helps mitigate climate change by using renewable fuels to power the process.

The basic process has been used for years and it involves using power to put water through electrolysis, splitting it into its constituent elements, gaseous hydrogen, and oxygen. The gas is captured and stored for various applications. The water can be reused.

Because high levels of energy were previously needed to complete this process, hydrogen gas manufacture has not been environmentally friendly. Now with plentiful renewable resources available, the game has changed and hydrogen becomes a viable source of fuel, which can power a number of applications. 

Spain is an obvious choice for such production techniques, because of its plentiful sunshine and wind. Companies such as PNE are available to take advantage of such natural resources and produce a cost-effective hydrogen gas.

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Spain grows its economy

Spain’s GDP expanded 0.6% in the fourth quarter of 2023 when compared with the previous quarter.

GDP (gross domestic product) is the measure of value created through the production of goods and services.

And fourth-quarter economic output grew 2.0% compared with the same quarter a year ago.

Annual growth was 1.9% in the third quarter.

The latest figures have just been released by the National Statistics Institute (INE),

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Spain imports LNG from Russia

Spain has imported its first cargo of LNG (liquefied natural gas) from Gazprom’s Portovaya LNG plant on the Baltic Sea reports Reuters.

The LNG was transported on the Cool Rover ship and offloaded at the Enagas LNG terminal in the Spanish port of Huelva.

LNG is not subject to Western sanctions, unlike crude oil.

Gazprom, which is a Russia state controlled company, has mostly lost the European pipeline gas export market, once the main source of foreign currency revenues for Moscow.

The Portovaya LNG plant was launched in September 2022 and has a capacity of 1.5 million metric tons per year.

It is close to the Russia-Finland border and was originally expected to come on stream in 2019, but was delayed for three years over safety concerns.

Most LNG from the plant goes to Turkey, Greece and China.

Reuters used data from LSEG to compile the story.