Ayman Asfari, until recently CEO of oilfield services firm Petrofac, has with his partners, formed Venterra, a company focused on offshore wind industry services.
In a statement on Thursday, Venterra said its plan was to create a global services champion supporting the offshore wind industry’s rapid expansion, through the acquisition, partnering, and investment in services businesses across the wind farm lifecycle.
"Venterra’s mission is to service wind energy developers globally with best-in-class engineering, construction and operations services, through acquiring and partnering with experienced and differentiated providers with an entrepreneurial culture and technological drive," Venterra said.
With the announcement of the company launch, Venterra also shared it has already acquired three offshore services companies FoundOcean, Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions (GDG), and Osbit. The three businesses together serve the offshore wind developers and operators. Together they have offices in 13 locations, operate in nine countries and have over 250 employees.
"By 2030, renewables are expected to provide 90% of the growth in global electricity demand, with global offshore wind capacity set to increase seven-fold from 33 GW in 2020 to around 250 GW. Venterra calculates that its global addressable market will be an average of £8 billion a year over the next decade as its capacity and market expands, representing around a quarter of the offshore market spend over the life of the wind farm," Venterra said.
Venterra said its business plan was to invest around £250 million ($344,4 million) in cash and by the issue of shares by mid-2022 in capabilities across the wind farm life cycle.
"In due course, it is Venterra’s intention to seek a public listing for its shares to maintain its growth trajectory," Venterra said.
Ayman Asfari, who established oilfield services giant Petrofac and until his recent retirement acted as Chief Executive will act as the executive chairman of Venterra. Rob Jewkes, former COO of Petrofac's Integrated Energy Services business will serve as CEO.
As for the three companies acquired, Ireland-based Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions (GDG) is an offshore engineering and design consultancy, with a particular focus in the offshore wind sector. The company has worked on over 35GW of offshore wind farm developments around the world, both as designers and owners’ engineers.
UK-based offshore engineering company Osbit designs, builds, and delivers offshore equipment for vessel and equipment operators in the area of including foundation installation, subsea trenching, cable lay, and handling.
FoundOcean is an offshore construction grouting company. The company’s primary area of expertise lies in securing structures to the seabed by foundation grouting, including multiple installations for offshore wind farms.
Venterra said it was in advanced discussions to acquire further companies by the year end and throughout the first half of next year. In addition, Venterra said it was looking to back experienced management teams to explore new specialist businesses that complement the Member Companies.
Ayman Asfari, Executive Chairman, said: "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.
"Venterra has been created to help meet this challenge. 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 specialized global workforce helping deliver the energy transition. We aim to create a new force in the offshore wind industry which will be a world-class industrial company."