Three international lenders are providing project finance to the Marubeni-backed 700 MW wind farm project in Saudi Arabia, sources said.

The lenders providing debt to the SAR 1.7bn (USD 453m) Yanbu wind project include the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank (SMTB), and Standard Chartered Bank, said the sources.

Marubeni, in a consortium with local real estate company Abdul Aziz Al Ajlan Sons Co. for Commercial and Real Estate Investment, signed the power purchase agreement (PPA) for the project with state-owned offtaker Saudi Power Procurement Company (SPPC) on 2 July.

The project sponsors are likely to reach financial close by November, one of the sources said.

JBIC, SMTB and Standard Chartered did not respond to requests for comment.

The consortium submitted a tariff of USD 1.72 cents a kilowatt-hour (kWh) to win the contract for the wind farm, to be located in Medina.

Yanbu is the fourth such scheme to be awarded under the Kingdom’s National Renewable Energy Programme (NREP), with the Marubeni and Abdul Aziz Al Ajlan Sons tie-up having already been successful twice.

The consortium won two of the previous tenders, the 600 MW Al-Ghat and the 500 MW Waad Al-Shamal wind farms, in May 2024.

It proposed tariffs of roughly USD 1.56 cents/kWh and USD 1.7 cents/kWh, respectively, for those wind farms.

These set world record low costs for electricity production from wind power so far, with average levelized electricity costs for wind power reaching around USD 37 a megawatt-hour in 2025, based on estimates by US investment bank Lazard.

The two projects reached financial close last November, with JBIC providing USD 148m for Al-Ghat and USD 136m for Waad Al-Shamal.

JBIC said at the time that those loans were co-financed with Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, Standard Chartered, and Commercial Bank of Dubai, bringing the total co-financing amounts to approximately USD 298m and USD 274m, respectively.

The SPPC will act as the offtaker for the electricity produced by these farms over 25 years.