India-based renewables firm Greenko has listed on the London AIM marker and raised just over £29M (US$60M), which it will use to help fund hydropower and other additions to its expanding asset portfolio.

The company has more than 32M Ordinary Shares placed by its broker Arden Partners resulting in £31.4M (US$65M) of gross proceeds, almost a doubling of shares in issue and a market capitalisation of approximately £66.4M (US$137.5M). Last month the company had talked of raising up to Euro60M (approx US$87M) gross from the offering.

Greenko plans to use the proceeds to satisfy financial commitments in existing projects and fund more projects, acquisitions and investments locally. At present it has secured assets with total installed capacity of 90.5MW, including 49MW from hydro plants just being acquired.

The purchase of two run-of-river hydropower businesses are underway – the 24.5MW AMR and 24.5MW Rithwik plants – both of which are due to be commissioned in June 2008. The plants are being built in South Canara, Karnataka in India, and will have Kaplan units installed, and each is expected to generate more than 66,000 Carbon Emission Reduction (CER) credits.

Greenko intends to build its portfolio to 400MW by 2010-11 through acquisition and investment in renewables projects that are being, or are to be, built. Its current portfolio has been dominated by biomass plants of single digit megawatt capacities, half of which having been bought over recent months. From the biomass plants it received approximately Euro2M (US$2.9M) in CER revenues, at about Euro12 per unit, in the financial year to 31 March.