Tokyo-based Sumitomo Corporation has acquired an equity stake in the newly founded EEW Offshore Wind Holding with commercial effect from 1 July.
The company said the German family-run EEW Offshore Wind Holding now has a strong strategic partner with extensive expertise in the international steel market by its side.
EEW Offshore Wind Holding is one of three newly founded holding companies that organise the group of companies more strongly according to business segments. It bundles the monopile business with the production site in Rostock (EEW SPC) and the associated mechanical engineering activities (AWS Schäfer, Siegen, DE).
The newly founded service company, EEW Management Services, will take over the services previously provided by EEW Holding and has also been assigned to this division.
In addition, the group will organise its business activities according to business areas through two additional holding companies: EEW Pipe Solutions Holding and EEW AOS Holding organise the other locations of the group of companies.
The existing management of the group of companies will remain in place.
In future, EEW Holding will be a purely asset-managing company, and will no longer provide its own services and will not act as a parent company.
The company name will be changed to DiScho Vermögensverwaltung GmbH & Co. KG.
With the restructuring and Sumitomo as a trusted partner, the EEW Group is ready to tackle future challenges in complete confidence. Its customers can rest assured that their large-scale monopile projects will be manufactured with the familiar and reliable quality that has always characterised EEW, it said.
“In order to continue to secure our position as global market leader, to continue to enable healthy growth and to be able to draw on sufficient resources to successfully handle large-scale projects, we, the owner families of Schorge and Dietze, have decided to bring a trusted strategic partner on board for this division,” said EEW Group Managing Partner Christoph Schorge.
“The majority shares remain with us as the owner families,” he added.
Japanese outfit Sumitomo Corporation is one of the largest integrated trading and business investment companies in the world and employs almost 80,000 people in 65 countries.
Its official entry into the EEW Group follows decades of successful business relations and the closing of the transaction is still subject to relevant EU approvals.
General manager of steel products SBU, Sumitomo Corporation, Takuro Horikoshi said: “We are excited to partner with EEW, enhancing our role in the offshore wind market.
“This investment aligns with our commitment of contributing to green transformation and global shift to renewable energy.”