Leading global wind turbine manufacturer Vestas has taken full ownership of its offshore turbine joint venture, MHI Vestas.
The Danish company revealed Thursday that it has acquired Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ half of the offshore business. MHI will take a 2.5 percent stake in Vestas and will be awarded a seat on the board in return. The all-stock deal is valued at around €709 million ($832 million).
Vestas is targeting market-leading status in offshore wind by 2025 and will launch a new technology platform in the near future.
“We won’t achieve market leadership with the current turbine,” said Henrik Andersen, group president and CEO of Vestas, during an analyst call.
Rival supplier Siemens Gamesa is the market leader for offshore wind turbines. In May, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy revealed a new 14-megawatt turbine, while GE’s Haliade-X platform, now scaled up to a 13-megawatt turbine, has provided it with fresh momentum in the offshore sector too.
MHI Vestas’ largest turbine is currently rated at 10 MW. In a statement, the company said its new tech would “improve efficiency and drive the levelized cost of energy further down.”
Vestas also said it would be eyeing savings and synergies in the domains of “sales, technology, manufacturing footprint and procurement to sustain customer relationships [and] lower costs.”
“When we’re sitting with two entities, we’re not going to maximize the value creation,” Andersen said on the call with analysts and investors.
Work on that integration begins immediately, and Andersen said efforts on bringing together procurement are also underway now that the acquisition is public. That process will accelerate once the deal closes, which is expected in Q4 2020 or Q1 2021.
Vestas and MHI will create a sales joint venture for both onshore and offshore turbines in the Japanese market.
Vestas eyes offshore wind’s rapid growth
Global offshore wind deployment is poised for growth, with the biggest markets getting even bigger and a raft of demand emerging in new locations too. The global offshore wind project pipeline has grown 50 percent in 2020, according to trade body RenewableUK.
Developer Ørsted is tracking as much as 30 gigawatts' worth of tenders in the next 15 months. The Asia-Pacific region is building momentum in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. The U.S. will host seven tenders during that period. The largest end market so far, the U.K., has committed to deploying 30 GW on its own between now and 2030. It currently has an installed capacity of around 10 GW.
“We’re very well localized and taking orders in Taiwan,” said Andersen. “We’re well positioned in Europe on the Isle of Wight [off the south coast of England], and I’m sure as the U.K. expands we can take advantage of the localization there.”
