London, England, 11th May 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Apex Trading Corporation Ltd, a London-based consultancy firm, brought a delegation of clients to southern Portugal this week for a first-hand look at one of the country’s most compelling renewable energy projects — and by all accounts, the land did the talking.
The group visited the United Renewables Alentejo Solar Park, a large-scale photovoltaic installation currently under construction on the site of the former São Domingos copper mine near Mértola, in the Lower Alentejo. The visit coincided with a significant milestone: the first 50,000 of the project’s 200,000 solar panels are now fully mounted, operational, and feeding live performance data into the site’s monitoring systems.
Apex Trading Corporation has been closely involved in bringing institutional capital to the project, and the site visit formed part of its broader due diligence and client relations programme. The delegation travelled from London to Faro before making the journey north into the Alentejo interior — a landscape of cork oaks, red earth, and vast open skies that gave way, as the convoy reached the mine plateau, to something altogether more unexpected.
Guests were taken by vehicle through the newly constructed access roads that cut across the 500-hectare site, before stepping out to walk among the tracker rows. The panels move slowly throughout the day, rotating east to west in unison to follow the arc of the sun — a detail that, in person, gives the installation an almost quiet, living quality that photographs struggle to convey.
“We’ve looked at a lot of solar projects,” said Robert Henney, a senior representative from Apex Trading Corporation. “What sets this one apart isn’t just the numbers, though the numbers are strong. It’s the story of the land. You’re not building on farmland or cutting into a hillside. You’re taking something that was written off and making it work. That’s a different kind of investment.”
The financial case is indeed robust. The project’s 80 MW installed capacity is projected to generate approximately 220 GWh of clean electricity annually.
Volunteers from the Mértola joined the group on site and outlined how the project’s €500,000 annual community fund — to be established when the park reaches full commercial operation — should be directed toward some of the town’s most pressing needs: funding for homeless shelters, support for local schools, investment in public library services, and other community infrastructure.
Mértola has carried the economic consequences of the mine’s closure in 1966 for six decades. The town has seen population decline, limited inward investment, and an unemployment rate that persistently outpaces the national average. The prospect of long-term, structured community funding was not lost on those gathered on the hillside.
“For many years, people here associated that mine with loss,” a Mértola resident told the group. “Something was taken from us and never replaced. This feels like something coming back.”
Construction is progressing ahead of schedule. Civil works across the site are complete, grid connection works are advancing along the 18-kilometre cable route toward the REN 150kV transmission line near Beja, and the remaining 150,000 panels are due to be installed through the summer and autumn. Full commercial operation is targeted for Q4 2026.
At capacity, the park will avoid approximately 38,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions every year. Over its 25-year operational lifespan, that figure approaches one million tonnes.
For the Apex Trading Corporation delegation, the afternoon ended with lunch in Mértola itself — a town of medieval castle walls and whitewashed streets that feels, for now, on the edge of something changing.
“This is exactly the kind of project we want to be associated with,” Robert Henney said. “Good returns, genuine impact, and a site that has a story worth telling.”
A second investor visit is planned for Q3 2026, timed to coincide with the installation of the final panel row and the energisation of the on-site substation.
