Russia seized €10m ($11m) of wind turbine blades when Vestas attempted to export them from the country, the company confirmed.
Vestas was a leading western pioneer in Russian wind power before the Ukraine invasion and was gearing up to supply major projects, but like other western companies swiftly saw its business there unravel as it planned a post-war retreat from a market where it had made significant manufacturing investments.
The Danish group said: “After the Russian contracts were terminated, we tried to export a number of blades from Russia in an attempt to salvage some of our Russian assets and to mitigate the overall losses.
“Vestas owned these assets, but due to EU and other Western sanctions, none of these blades could be sold or used in the Russian energy sector. Therefore, the blades could either only be scrapped, seized or saved for export.”
Vestas added in a statement: "The blades were Vestas' property and we tried to save the value they represented for both us and the green transition outside of Russia. We did not want to leave blades, belonging to Vestas, with the risk that the blades would become a contribution to a sanctioned Russian energy sector."
The exit of western companies has left Vestas in a legal dispute with its former main developer customer in Russia, the Finnish power group Fortum, with which it terminated contracts after invoking sanctions clauses in contracts.
Fortum itself has seen its own Russian business seized under a decree from Vladimir Putin in a move it claims breaks international agreements.
