The Patrizia investment fund formally enters the infrastructure sector in Spain. This company above all known for its real estate projects (It is behind one of the largest operations of the year in the student residence segment and has bought this 2022 1,500 houses to rent in Barcelona) has decided to open up here to co-finance public projects that have to do with the lightingthe waste managementthe optical fiberthe digitizationnot the roads, among many others. It has 1,500 million euros divided into two funds of 750 million to do it globally, although the only limit is to allocate a maximum of 150 million euros per project. In Italiaa market that serves as a reference in the case of Spain, have 300 million allocated to bets of this style.
Here the first investment of this style has been a toll road in Murciabut they are already studying two operations of approximately 25 and 50 million euros related to the optical fiber and with a smart waste collection system.
“The problem with these projects is that they need a lot of capital, and many municipalities do not have money or cannot borrow more to finance them: that is Patrizia’s main role,” explains the Director of Patrizia Infrastructures, Phoebe Smith and the investment manager from the same division Jose Artiles.
In this sense, what Patrizia proposes is to apply as an investment partner for initiatives of this style. They consider both reaching agreements with technology companies to present themselves to public tenders, how to finance private initiatives that are already in advanced conversations with municipalities. “The objective in Spain is to replicate what we are doing in Italy: there we have acquired two public lighting companies and now we work with some 100 municipalities, especially in small municipalities”, summarizes Artiles.
Smart city
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In this way, for example, to enter a contest to operate public lighting using LED lights and sensors that help make the system more efficient, becomes a gateway to end up collaborating with the City Council in many other areas. “Efficient waste management, putting security cameras on the main streets so that the municipality has better control of what is happening in the busiest areas, put infrastructure so that citizens have a Free public Wi-Fi, electric vehicle chargers…”, list both managers. In the end, the underlying goal is to accelerate the arrival of the smart city and, in fact, the company has focused its recent participation in the Smart City Expo World Congress de Barcelona in promoting this new role.
In short, “Patrizia wants to act as an investor -explains the firm-, at a time when many municipalities and regions need financing to be more sustainable or improve their digital infrastructure”. “We are a real estate investor who wants to be significantly involved in the infrastructure segment”, they conclude.