Former Petrofac chief executive Ayman Asfari (pictured) and a group of energy sector heavyweights have formed a new global offshore wind services outfit Venterra.
The company said its mission is to service wind energy developers globally with best-in-class engineering, construction and operations services, through acquiring and partnering with existing providers.
At launch, Venterra has acquired Irish engineering consultant GDG, UK outfit Osbit and construction company FoundOcean as member companies.
Advanced discussions to acquire further companies are expected to lead to further member companies joining Venterra by the year end and throughout the first half of next year, it said.
The company has assembled a board and management team with a business plan to invest around £250m.
It intends to seek a public listing for its shares to maintain its growth trajectory in due course.
The Board of Directors comprises Asfari as executive chairman, ex Petrofac energy services coo Rob Jewkes as chief executive and former Centrica man Ivan Ronald as chief financial officer.
BP veteran Vivienne Cox and Tove Feld, who has worked at both Orsted and Siemens, join as non-executive directors.
“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,” said Asfari.
“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.”