A new global offshore wind services group has been launched by former Petrofac chief Ayman Asfari, seeking to help head off a widely foreseen supply chain crunch coming with the rapid ramp-up deployments in the decades ahead.
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Venterra, which will incorporate contractors Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions, Osbit and FoundOcean, will provide a portfolio and engineering, construction and operations services starting in the northern European market, but expects to expand by “acquiring and partnering with experienced and differentiated providers with an entrepreneurial culture and technological drive”.
“Offshore wind energy is growing fast around the world and is essential to the global energy transition. But there is a supply chain crunch - the services industry supporting wind is highly fragmented and needs greater scale and additional capital to meet soaring demand from governments and developers with ambitious renewable energy commitments,” said Asfari, who will be executive chairman of the new group.
“We are bringing together companies with the right experience and specialist skills and providing them with funding and support to create a services champion with the scale and breadth required by the market.
“This will require us to develop talent and adapt existing engineering and technical skills to create a highly specialised global workforce helping deliver the energy transition.”
The group has assembled a board and management team featuring former BP and Orsted executives that will be led by former Petrofac chief operating office Rob Jewkes, with a business plan to invest around £250m ($345m) in cash and via the issue of shares “by mid-2022”.
Venterra calculates that its “global addressable market” will be an average of £8bn a year over the next decade as deployment ratchets-up toward 250GW. The group plans to seek a public listing “in due course”, while also expanding its “member companies”.
Along with Asfari and Jewkes, the Venterra board includes: chief financial officer Ivan Ronald, most recently in the same role at GKN Aerospace; Vivienne Cox, the former CEO of BP’s gas, power and renewable business; and Tove Feld, one-time chief technology officer of Orsted.
