Swiss utility Axpo looking abroad for growth opportunities, NZZ am Sonntag reports

ZURICH (Reuters) – Axpo Holding AG, the Swiss power group that got an emergency 4 billion Swiss franc ($4.27 billion) credit line from the state this year, is looking abroad for growth opportunities, company president Tom Sieber told the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper.

“We must continue to grow strongly — especially abroad,” Sieber said in an interview with the Sunday newspaper.

In the coming years and decades, many of Axpo’s hydroelectric power plant concessions will revert to Swiss cantons, the paper said. Furthermore, Swiss nuclear power plants will be shut down.

Expansion in Switzerland could compensate for these losses “only to a very limited extent”, Sieber said.

($1 = 0.9367 Swiss francs)

(Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)