Northumberland based offshore engineering company Osbit has joined an exciting new offshore wind group poised to invest £250m in capabilities across the offshore windfarm life-cycle by mid-2022.
Osbit, which already employs over 120 people across its Port of Blyth and Riding Mill sites, is now a founding Member Company in Venterra Group, which is today announcing its public launch.
The acquisition of Osbit by Venterra Group is set to supercharge the company’s already considerable presence in the global offshore wind technology market. Osbit is now launching an accelerated growth campaign to significantly expand its workforce in North East England, with a range of highly skilled positions.
Venterra Group, which is UK-based, is a new offshore wind energy business focused on helping the world’s energy transition through wind power. The group is formed by industry experts and aims to become a leading offshore renewables energy services champion. Osbit joins as one of three initial Member Companies selected for offering best-in-class services and substantial growth capability.
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.
The group’s primary focus is to become a large-scale services player in this rapidly expanding market by acquiring, partnering and investing in businesses across the entire life cycle of offshore wind development, to accelerate the journey to net zero. However, it will also contribute to other forms of energy, particularly those supporting energy transition, such as well intervention.
Venterra’s objective is to support and enhance its Member Companies, while retaining each company’s unique brand, culture, and independence.
Osbit, which is already a significant player in offshore wind equipment areas including foundation installation, trenching, and access, will benefit from greater investment capability, accelerated growth, and a wider range of expertise as part of Venterra Group. In due course, it is Venterra Group’s intention to seek a public listing for its shares, to maintain its growth trajectory.
Following its joining of Venterra, Osbit has already initiated a large-scale recruitment campaign. The company is seeking to significantly expand its engineering and project support teams in response to the huge growth in offshore wind both locally, in North East England, as well as internationally. The company will be sharing details on further developments in the coming months.
Osbit Joint Managing Director Brendon Hayward, comments: “We are thrilled to be joining Venterra Group, a hugely promising new enterprise which is fully aligned with Osbit’s vision of enabling energy transition. This partnership has been many months in the making and is a great fit for Osbit; Venterra understands and appreciates our business and its culture and is fully equipped to take Osbit to the next level.
We’re now working to expand our team, and we are very hopeful that, in due course, this hugely exciting development will also encourage expansion within our core suppliers, the vast majority of whom are also North East England based.”
Osbit Joint Managing Director Robbie Blakeman adds: “Our team is very excited to enter a next chapter as part of Venterra. This opportunity will strengthen our business and our team, as well as supercharging our ability to develop highly innovative technology to enable energy transition.
In turn, this enables us to grow and increase our service offering across the global wind projects we are already active on in the North Sea, but also planned developments in the US and Asia.”
Ayman Asfari, Venterra Executive Chairman, comments: “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 specialised 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.”