Fonterra anchors 80% of Anza Power's first New Zealand solar farm

Fonterra anchors 80% of Anza Power's first New Zealand solar farm A long-term offtake deal with the dairy processor gives Anza Power bankable revenue for a 42 MWdc Canterbury solar project due online in 2028. Anza Power has signed its first power purchase agreement in New Zealand, with dairy processor Fonterra agreeing to buy 80% of the output from the 42 MWdc Somerton Solar Farm near Rakaia in Canterbury, Asian Power reported.⁵ The contract hands the project a buyer before it has produced a single unit of electricity. Once Somerton comes online in early 2028, it is expected to generate roughly 65,000 MWh a year, and Fonterra's long-term commitment covers the bulk of that. The agreement is also Anza's entry into the New Zealand market, its first electricity offtake deal in the country. For a developer arriving in a new market, a single industrial buyer taking four-fifths of production is what separates a financeable build from a speculative one.⁵ For Fonterra, described by Asian Power as a dairy giant, the appeal of a long-dated, low-carbon slice of supply is straightforward for a processor that runs heat and power around the clock.⁵ Locking a solar plant's output into one large buyer is the kind of corporate deal now underpinning new renewable capacity, and the model is spreading fast. Experts told Montel that "strategic" repowering PPAs, which sell the extra output unlocked by modernising ageing plants, are poised to sweep Europe as developers run short of cheap greenfield sites.² In 2025 one developer signed a 10-year repowering agreement with Italian utility A2A to sell 22 GWh a year of additional solar output from 19 modernised plants.² Uniper runs a dedicated desk placing renewable output with corporate offtakers under long-term contracts.⁴ Somerton is being built storage-ready, though no batteries are installed yet.⁵ That choice tracks a problem already biting in higher-penetration markets. EDF's renewable arm said it would halt generation at 842 MW of French subsidised solar and wind farms whenever spot power prices turn negative.¹ In China, the solar-curtailment rate climbed to 5.7%, from 3% in the first half of 2024, while wind curtailment rose to 6.6% from 3.9%, the Economist reported.³ New Zealand sits well below those penetration levels. But the economics point the same way for an asset meant to run into the 2030s. As more panels crowd the same midday hours, unstored solar earns less, and a battery converts midday surplus into power that can be sold when it is scarcer. The wiring for storage is the cheap part to put in now; whether Anza actually installs the cells is the commercial decision that will set how much of Somerton's value it captures.⁵ The fifth of output Fonterra is not buying will be sold merchant, exposed to whatever Canterbury daytime prices do as more solar capacity arrives in the region.⁵ A high anchor-offtake share protects the equity, but it does not remove the risk that the uncontracted slice falls in value precisely when the plant is generating hardest. That is the same dynamic forcing curtailment on subsidised European fleets, and it is why a 2028 solar asset is designed around batteries it may not yet own.¹ Two years separate the signing from first power, and the contract price and tenor were not disclosed.⁵ The signal to track now is whether Anza converts the storage-ready design into installed batteries before commissioning, and whether the Fonterra arrangement, a large industrial buyer underwriting a regional solar build, repeats elsewhere in New Zealand.⁵