Ramboll Acquires K2, Aurora Expands into Chilean Market

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

This week Allen, Phil, and Joel discuss Ramboll’s acquisiton of K2 Management, Sumitomo Corporation’s acquired stake in EEW Offshore Wind Holding, and Aurora Energy Services acqusition of Altitech Blade Services.

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Allen Hall: I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I’m here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro and the chief commercial officer of WeatherGuard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor. com.

Danish engineering firm Ramboll has acquired K2 Management, a wind and solar energy consultancy. This move expands Rambl’s global wind division to over 900 people across 20 countries, including a new presence in Vietnam, Thailand, and Portugal. The acquisition is part of Rambl’s strategy to grow its wind business to over 1, 000 people by 2025, enhancing its ability to provide services across all stages of wind energy projects globally.

Now, Phil. Why the push to get into places like Vietnam and Thailand and Portugal at the minute?

Philip Totaro: Well, it’s interesting because they’re, K2 has done a really good job over the years of doing a lot of owners engineering services and other consultancy services around project development, particularly in these kind of emerging markets.

So, you And Ramble historically has gotten a lot of feed contracts doing, some of the EPC basically scope of work and, and design work on Offshore sites the fact that they would fold K2 management’s capabilities in with what they already have is, is going to provide the combined company the opportunity to get a wider scope of work from a lot of these, particularly a lot of these emerging markets where.

In an emerging market, you want to turn key service provider. This gets them one step closer to, to doing that.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, this, to me, this is a huge acquisition in the space. If you’re in the offshore wind space or in the wind space in general, and we’re just talking wind, not solar and everything else that both of these companies do two big players, you’re joining up.

So it, like Phil said, you’re going to have a full suite of capabilities in a lot of parts of the world, because there’s parts where K2 operates where Rambo doesn’t, or where K2 has made inroads and Rambo hasn’t.

Allen Hall: In Germany, EEW Group has reorganized its business into three holding companies. Japanese firm Sumitomo Corporation has acquired a stake in one of these, EEW Offshore Wind Holding.

This holding company focuses on the monopile business and associated mechanical engineering activities. This partnership aims to secure EEW’s position as a global market leader in offshore wind foundations. And Phil, there’s a lot of work happening in foundations at the minute and a lot of movement in the business world about that.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, and, and for Sumitomo’s benefit they have a lot of contracts to do, both foundations and to partner with other companies to do topsides on offshore substations in particular. So, like we just talked about with with Ramboll and K2 getting together. And having kind of complementary capabilities.

This is a similar thing where Sumitomo obviously already has some presence in, in monopile fabrication, but EEW is without a doubt the, the global leader here. And EEW is also establishing themselves in the United States. They’re looking at the Brazilian market. They’re looking at other markets globally where they can, they can position themselves.

Having Sumitomo’s backing helps make that a lot easier.

Joel Saxum: As the offshore wind sector grows whether it’s fixed bottom, whether it is the new, the new frontiers of floating. There’s going to be a lot of work here, right? So we have talked in the last few weeks in the podcast about a couple of, another Spanish company kind of get that.

So a leader in the space as well. What people don’t understand. I don’t think when they see pictures of these transition pieces, monopiles, and there’s other things offshore. Is that the size and scale and the scope of engineering that goes into these things is a massive and the interactions between, being in the water column, being in the air having some of it submerged under, in different geotechnical formations of mud bottom, sand bottom, rocky bottoms, all these different things.

It is a very, very complex part of the offshore wind piece that we don’t see that much. And if you’re not involved in offshore infrastructure, and then you don’t really pay too much attention because you don’t even see it. But the, it is going to be a huge part of the industry as we move forward and build out our offshore wind fleet.

Allen Hall: Aurora Energy Services, a Scottish headquartered company, has expanded into South America by acquiring the Latin American assets of Altitech blade services. This gives Aurora a presence in Chile with operations in Santiago. Aurora has already secured two significant projects in Chile and aims to grow its Chilean business to 5 to 10 million dollars annually with around 50 employees over the next three years.

The company, which currently has a global workforce of approximately 700 employees and a forecast annual revenue of 95 million dollars, is also exploring opportunities in Asia Pacific and South Africa. Bill, the, the Scots are reaching out all over the world

Philip Totaro: with wind. They are. And this is again, kind of a fascinating deal from the perspective of, Aurora obviously already has a presence in kind of other industry verticals and has been kind of dipping their toes in the water with tidbits of work that they can get in, in renewable energy.

But it’s also fascinating from Ultitech’s perspective because they obviously still have their presence in the UK and other global markets, but to sell off the Chilean business is, is a bit of a fascinating move, I guess, because, Chile’s a growing market and I don’t know if Ultitech really had the resources necessary to be able to tackle what they want to be able to accomplish in that market without, the backing of somebody like Aurora so I think it’s, again, it’s a good play on, on their part and it gives them access to a few projects, as you mentioned but there’s significantly more potential there because it’s a lot of these South South American markets are highly fragmented in terms of where they’re getting their service from.

Some of it’s coming from OEMs, some of it is independent service providers, and there’s a handful of companies that have tried to go it alone and operate and maintain their own assets. So, the fact that Aurora can step in with an ISP play that they can, bolster their, their position in the market where they, they are potentially poised to take advantage of any OEMs that are not really getting the job done on, on the assets that they have.

Or the owner operators that have chosen to self perform.

Joel Saxum: If Aurora seems like a name that you’ve heard before, and if you’re in the wind industry, especially, specifically in blades, it may be because Aurora, as they’re growing here by acquisition, Also acquired Kotec IRM out of Houston a couple years ago.

So that’s the Aurora Kotec company, and they’re a big player in the, in the blade space on a global basis. I know they do a lot of work in Brazil as well. So you can see Aurora Energy coming from Scotland, like we said, spreading its wings by acquisition and, of course, organically to grow all over the world to be a big player in the blade world.