Region: SPS backed with $40m investment


23 Aug 2021 | 1 minute read

SPS portfolio

CDC Group’s Gridworks and South Africa's New GX Capital announced on 23 August investments worth $40m in commercial and industrial solar company Sustainable Power Solutions Investments. New GX Capital is a utility infrastructure-focused company owned by the Pitje family trust and led by Khudusela Pitje.

The transaction will see Gridworks become the majority shareholder in SPS, which was already one of its portfolio companies, with an investment of $22m. New GX Capital will replace minority shareholders Trigen Group and Genfin with its $18m stake. Titan Group, owned by retail magnate Christo Wiese, will remain a shareholder in the company. Pitje and Varin van Woudenberg will join the SPS board.

Gridworks has been an investor in SPS since late-2019, when the company was known as Mettle Solar Investments. Since then, SPS has built more than 22MW of grid-tied solar projects in Southern Africa and Kenya as well as 4.2MW/8.7MWh of island mode projects in the Seychelles, including some of the largest systems to use Tesla Powerpacks (AE 437/5).

SPS chief executive Francois Van Themaat said, “we are thankful to Gridworks and CDC group for their continued strong support of our business. Their initial investment was made just as the world went into lockdown due to the Covid pandemic and their support allowed us to grow our business rapidly during a very challenging period. During the last quarter we have consolidated our funding and engineering businesses under the single SPS brand which, combined with the new capital injected by shareholders, will allow us to expand our fully integrated solar PV and battery storage offering across sub-Saharan Africa.”

Overall, SPS has developed more than 45MW of solar power and 15MWh battery storage in Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, and the Indian Ocean islands. The company is targeting a further 100MW of projects.

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