In this News Flash: Offshore Wind Consultants (OWC) is acquiring Delta Wind Partners, a specialist in offshore wind turbine solutions, to expand its technical offerings and consultancy services for offshore wind projects. The move is seen as a strategic partnership to acquire more engineers and capabilities, leading to market share growth.

Equinor is set to acquire Rio Energy, a prominent onshore renewables company in Brazil, through an agreement with Denham Capital. This move allows Equinor to establish a leading role in Brazil’s rapidly growing renewables industry, enhancing its production cash flow and project pipeline.

TPI, a blades company, has hired Neil Jones as its Chief Quality Officer, a newly created position. The company aims to address quality issues in its wind business and reassure investors, operators, and insurance companies about its commitment to quality. TPI has also experienced management shuffles, indicating a potential realignment of upper-level management and a shift toward implementing a higher level of quality control, considering their transition to a build-to-print business model.

Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
Wind Power LAB – https://windpowerlab.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com

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News Flash – 24 July 2023

Allen Hall: I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with the Vice President of North American Sales for Wind Power LAB, Joel Saxum and the Founder and CEO of Intelstor Phil Totaro, and this is your News Flash.

Offshore Wind Consultants is acquiring Delta Wind Partners to expand its technical offering in wind turbines and consultancy for offshore wind projects. Wind Partners is a specialist in all kinds of solutions involving offshore wind turbines. Now. Now Joel, this seems to be an obvious partnership just because everybody’s looking for engineers.

Everybody’s looking for offshore wind experience.

Joel Saxum:  Yeah. Grabbing, grabbing engineers, grabbing capabilities, and growing market share. So, Right. It’s the same thing. We talk about this, this kind of grouping of companies that are complimentary to each other. If your culture matches a bit and, and they’ve got 10 engineers and you’ve got 10 engineers, let’s put ’em all together.

We got 20 engineers. Now we’re, now, we’re a big company that can be entrusted more 

Allen Hall: and Delta Wood Partners has a couple of projects that has worked on some projects in the UK, Ireland, Japan, and South Korea. Now, Phil, South Korea is a big growing area for offshore wind. Does bringing in some expert expertise for a group that has worked in South Korea help out offshore wind consultants?

Phil Totaro: Absolutely. So OWC has some of their own contracts on some of the kind of projects that are in the pipeline. But even generally, like OWC’s Parent Company, ABL. They have been kind of expanding their capability throughout offshore wind over the past, you know, five, six years. So this is just adding one more piece to that, that puzzle that gives them kind of a a market leading position.

Allen Hall: Everybody’s looking to grab the market position. At the moment everybody’s getting bigger. More of this to come. Equinor will acquire Rio Energy, a prominent onshore renewables company in Brazil through an agreement with Denham capital. Deal includes selected assets and the team while denim capital will retain.

Certain assets. The move allows Equinor to take a leading role in the rapidly growing Brazilian renewables industry and enhances its production cash flow and project pipeline. Phil Brazil is going crazy on renewables.

Phil Totaro:  Yeah, and this, this one’s interesting because real energy’s got over 600 megawatts of onshore wind.

It’s operational. They’ve got another three or 400 in onshore wind in their pipeline. They’ve got some solar in their pipeline and, and a little bit operational as well. But Brazil as a market has seen an, you know, a spike in the past few years. They had a little over four gigawatts installed last year.

They’re probably gonna have about that same, if not a little bit more installed this year. And this is just giving a, a big brand name like Ecuador. The opportunity to work with a, a company that’s actually got a, a fairly not only decently sized portfolio for the size of the market With Rio Energy, but also if you look at the asset profitability that Rio’s got they’re, they’re not at the top, but they’re close.

You know, 

Joel Saxum: another thing to think about here too is if anybody’s done international business before, Brazil is tough to get into, right? It’s tough to bring in assets. It’s tough to bring in people. It’s tough to get a foothold. You normally have to have an agent or a friend or another company, a partner, collaborator within country.

Now, Equinor has been over there for many years in the offshore oil and gas world as well. So they know how to play in the area. They, they know some of the players, they’ve got some context there. Of course, Equinor has got a, a local presence as well. So this one makes sense. They’re, they’re, as EOR grows, its renewables portfolio on the world scale.

Hopping into Brazil for renewables is right in line.

Allen Hall: TPI announced that it has hired Neil Jones as its Chief Quality Officer. This is a newly created position, and Neil will oversee all quality processes, systems, and controls relating to TPIs wind business, and report directly to TPIs president and CEO.

Well, this is interesting, Joel, because everybody’s having quality issues with blades. You haven’t seen a lot of noise in terms of management shuffles, but this appears to be TPIs way of bringing in some more controls on the quality side. Yeah, 

Joel Saxum: I mean, on the Wind Power Lab side, we see a lot of these things coming from at factory.

It’s, we’re always telling people, get factory inspections done, do a factory audit, make sure that things are you’re, you’re receiving a quality product. Now, in my circles, of course, playing in the Blades world, T P I Blades company. We hear whisperings all the time. Hey, what do you guys know about the TPI blades?

You know, blade X, Y, Z. What do you know about TPI blade A, B, C? So there is a little bit of a feeling in the marketplace among the operators and the insurance industry of some quality issues within t p I. Now, do they come from tpi? Are they blades GE designed? And TPI is just building them. So there’s a, there’s definitely more levels to the, to the issue here.

But I think it’s a great move by TPI to instill a little bit more basically the warm, fuzzy feeling back in the marketplace. That they’re looking at their quality issues by creating this position and putting someone with a lot of experience 

Allen Hall: in it. So Phil TPI also recently shuffled their company president and c o o out of and employment there.

That came as a shock at least to the industry because there wasn’t much notice about it. But it does seem like there is some realignment of the upper levels of management at TPI Composites. Does that make sense? Based upon what the future outlook is for T P I and the number of orders they have coming in and maybe trying to square up their, their quality system.

Phil Totaro: It’s, it’s interesting because, you know, even going back like 10 or 15 years, TPIs business was largely build what we call kind of build to spec. Blades and, you know, they were in control of a lot more of the IP and et cetera, et cetera, and they’ve transitioned more to a build to print type of business model where they’re getting designs from the OEMs and they’re having to, you know, implement an OEM level quality system.

So this is potentially part of that. There could always be other issues why somebody just wasn’t the right fit for, for the company. But I think this, this is all part of an ongoing kind of transition amongst the, the industry to you know, have more. Focus paid on, on quality because it’s obviously costing companies money.

I mean, look how much stock price that that Siemens go Mesa lost as a result of announcing the quality issues they had on their own blades. So, you know, t p I also, being a publicly traded company, they want to be able to reassure everybody their own investors. Investors in renewable projects and insurance companies in the, the wind industry globally that they are, are taking quality seriously.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. So that could have been a boardroom talk as well. Hey, we’ve seen this in the marketplace and the, the, the general market is losing or, or seize quality issues as a thing. Hey, let’s make sure we get in front of this and get a quality person in place.