Denmark Supports Vestas’ Australian Project, TPI Sells Auto Business, Nabrawind and LiftWerx Receive Investment

TPI Composites sells its automotive business, Fortescue invests in
Nabrawind's innovative wind turbine technology, LiftWerx receives a
majority equity investment from TowerBrook Capital Partners, and
Denmark's Export and Investment Fund supports Vestas' involvement
in Australia's Golden Plains Wind Farm. Sign up now for Uptime Tech
News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This
episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn
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www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com 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 Weather Guard, Joel Saxum, and
this is your NewsFlash. Newsflash is brought to you by our friends
at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates
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TPI Composites has decided to sell its automotive business unit to
investment firm, Clear Creek Investments. This divestiture aligns
with TPI's strategy to focus on its core wind energy business. The
sale is expected to improve TPI's monthly cash flow by about 1. 7
million over the remainder of 2024. TPI composites accounted for
around 33 percent of all onshore wind blades on a megawatt basis
globally, excluding China. Now, Phil, it does seem like wind energy
companies that have been dabbling in associated industries are
trying to get back out of them. Philip Totaro: To a certain extent,
yes. It's, it's interesting because we go through these periods
where companies like to be able to vertically integrate in any one
industry vertical or, or potentially dabble in, in others. But the
timing of this is interesting in the context of. TPI wants to be
able to strengthen their position and their relationship with GE,
who obviously is going through, some tumult with LM wind power as
they kind of right size that, that company. TPI doesn't want to
lose GE's business because they're, quite highly dependent on it.
And with the rise of kind of Chinese wind turbine manufacture,
blade manufacturers, they have increased competition. In the world
for blade manufacturing that they didn't have, even going back a
few years, so divesting the automotive business segment is
fascinating that it's going to leave them to focus on the core wind
energy segment. It hasn't been, the best of times for them
recently, but hopefully this allows them to continue. Growing
their, their footprint in within the industry and throughout the
rest of the world. Joel Saxum: I see this as a gamble, right?
Because a lot of times if you are very dependent on one revenue
stream, i. e. TPI, building blades, If you have another, and that
building with that being tumultuous, right? There's contracts come
up, they come down, there's TPI, there's blade issues, you gotta
have warranty claims, all these different things. So that's a
pretty, kind of a risky business model. If you have another thing
it's just like diversifying your portfolio, right? If you have
another entity or another silo that makes money, Or is, is doing
decent and supporting, I think, I would think you'd keep it at this
point in time to be able to kind of like flatten out your revenues.
Now, if you're a company that's a a large entity where you're like
a, and I'm, I know they're connected business wise, but I'm saying
just GE as example where aerospace and health and all these
different things. Yeah, at that point in time, it makes sense to
silo off some things and focus in. But if it's TPI and you're just
doing blades and then a little bit of automotive, I would think
you'd keep it to be able to kind of, bolster your revenue base, but
going a different direction. There's going switching to just blade.
Philip Totaro: So, and keep in mind, this could be because they're
pursuing a deal with somebody and the deal they're pursuing
somebody saying, get rid of this automotive business because we
don't want it. If we're going to acquire you or otherwise partner
with you. So that could be driving it as well. Allen Hall:
Australian mining and green energy company Fortescue has made an
additional equity investment into Spanish wind turbine innovator
Nabrawind. The investment aims to accelerate the commercialization
of Nabrawind's innovative products such as modular blades craneless
blade installation systems and self erecting towers and the
partnership between Fortescue and Nabrawind, which began in 2023,
focuses on addressing challenges in onshore wind installations
related to logistics and project delays. Now, Phil, we have seen a
number of concepts and early adaptations of turbine erecting
equipment. Why is Fortescue investing in Nabrawind at this point
and where does that push Nabrawind? Philip Totaro: Hmm. Yeah, this
is a really interesting kind of evolution of Nabrawind's journey so
far. Thank you. Whereas they've been regionally focused in Spain
and, and also North Africa recently with some of the demonstrations
that they've done. This really, they, they've also worked a little
bit in China with some companies to try and bolster their position
there. Through some technology and IP licensing, but the reason why
Fortescue wants this now is Fortescue's different business units,
including Squadron Energy Wind Lab which are kind of merging
together they want to be able to develop projects in remote
locations in Australia where they aren't going to be able to truck
components out there very conveniently. And so having something
that could do self erection on the tower and or the blades would be
desirable. So that's kind of the first bit, coupled with the fact
that Forescue is building some of these mega projects that are, 10
gigawatts, 20, 30 gigawatts in size, and they want to use, megawatt
onshore wind turbines. And so with that in mind as well, they want
to have technology that's going to allow them to be able to do
that. You, if you know anything about the logistics kind of
situation for the existing. tower manufacturers in Australia, they
can't get a lot of their towers trucked to the places where they
need to go because they just don't have the physical infrastructure
in Australia to be able to do it. So having, this kind of self
erecting technology comes in handy in, in that use case. Now that
said this is pretty much it. Putting a lot of eggs in, in one
basket at this point with a technology that's, gone through. I
mean, it's been in development for almost 10 years now and it's
gone through a fair amount of, of technological diligence and
whatnot. But it hasn't actually really been. Kind of deployed at
scale yet. So we have yet to see whether or not this is going to be
a useful capability or not to me. Joel Saxum: This one is
reminiscent of the oil business. Okay. So when oil companies, oil
majors, specifically ones with really deep pockets, see the need
for technology, whether it's an offshore platform, subsea drilling,
like the really difficult stuff. They invest in and or provide
capital to smaller innovation and technology groups to develop it
for them simply because building, doing that stuff internally is
very tough, right? If you're a, let's take it for example, if
you're a Chevron, it's a lot harder to build up an innovation
department with a bunch of smart engineers and fund it and do all
this stuff rather than an engineering group coming to the team and
saying, Hey, we have a need for. Product XYZ, find us someone to
build it, and then someone might have a sponsor, and they grab the
cash, they give it to them, they build it, and they deliver it to
them. That's a model that's used in the oil and gas business
regularly, and this is reminiscent of it. The guys, the Squadron
Energy team that's gonna build, wants to build all these massive
wind farms in Western Australia, they see a need for some, some new
technology and they're not going to develop it themselves. So they
just grab the capital, give it to someone that will, and reap the
benefits. Allen Hall: Tower Brook Capital Partners has made a
majority equity investment in Canada based LiftWerx. LiftWerx has
developed proprietary up tower crane technology for turbine
servicing. Their innovative solutions are seen as faster, cheaper,
safer, and more environmentally friendly compared to existing
alternatives. This marks the third investment for Towerbrook's
impact strategy, Towerbrook Delta, launched last year. So LiftWerx
has been making rapid improvements and getting out to a number of
sites in Canada and the United States. We recently had them near a
wind farm in Massachusetts near me. And it, the, the adaptation of
that, the adoption rate of LiftWerx is astoundingly fast. Which
means they need cash, right, though? Philip Totaro: Absolutely. And
keep in mind, my understanding is that their kind of crane less or
onboard crane technologies, avoiding the, the big crane callout,
shall we say that lets you fix components up to about a three
megawatt turbine size, I think? So they, what, what that
facilitates is, as kind of average turbine sizes have, have grown
and, and their technology is also gotten better, it's seeing more
widespread adoption because we, we know, from discussions we've had
on the show before as well, that, Faults and failures are kind of
increasing, particularly things that require either a large
component swap out, like a blade or a gearbox, maybe an uptower
converter or something.