Mainstream plans to raise €75m by selling 20pc stake

Mainstream, headed up by former Airtricity boss and founder Eddie O'Connor, closed its last major equity investment in 2013, when Japanese trading company Marubeni Corporation poured €100m into the renewable energy company, in return for a shareholding of approximately 25pc.

Speaking to the Sunday Independent, Mr O'Connor said: "We would look to raise €75m in pure equity right now, we're not interested in raising more debt.

"I don't know how close we are to closing funding, but certainly in this financial year we'll have raised that.

"There's a lot of interest in it," he said. "It'll be for about 20pc - depending on what share price investors come in at."

Mr O'Connor declined to give the company's current revenues, and said only that the firm was loss making last year and expects to be turning a profit from here on out.

"If I had the money to invest now myself I would, we're in a very good place globally at the moment," he said.

The raise comes at a time when Mainstream Renewables has just landed several major projects in developing markets such as South Africa and Chile. During the past week, the company also announced that it has secured a contract to build a €2bn-valued 450MW windfarm off the coast of Scotland.

The Dublin-based firm is also looking to raise just under $500m over the next number of months through five separate investment vehicles to fund various projects in Africa and Latin America.

Despite its recent increased activity the company is cutting back on its staff, with Mr O'Connor saying that the firm is in the middle of a process that will see it shed 60 of its 180 personnel worldwide as it looks to focus on emerging markets such as Latin America and Africa.

Mr O'Connor said that this will increase profitability "dramatically" and result in an increase of cash flow.

He added that, while the company is keeping its base in Dublin, it will not be working on any projects in Ireland for the foreseeable future.

"We decided we were going to do a load of strategic changes in 2014.

"We're planning on getting out of offshore, getting out of America, getting out of Canada and getting out of Ireland.

"I don't see any future for wind turbines in Ireland," he said.

"Some 90pc of the builds in the world will occur in emerging markets. They need the power, they're short of it and a company that has the right strategy and funding will do well."

Regarding an initial public offering, Mr O'Connor insisted business plans for a stockmarket flotation are still on the back burner, but had not been forgotten. Mainstream had planned to float in Asia.

"We've always had this idea that this company is going to be on the stock exchange. That's been put back by a few years because of the state of the world economy but it's still our goal, I want to create liquidity in our shares," he said.