Odense: The offshore wind market is getting more competitive, says one of Europe’s top names in the sector today. Frank Hansen, ceo of Denmark’s CT Offshore, tells Maritime CEO he is seeing more and more companies entering and investing in this relatively new sector, especially financially heavy companies from the oil and gas industry.
“Large investments have been made on the vessel side during the past five years and many more are possible to come,” he says, adding: “This of course also has an impact on the competition.”
However, CT Offshore’s niche, namely cable installation is relatively well insulated.
Hansen took the reins of the Danish firm this May, taking over from founder, Paw Cortes. Hansen was previously managing director at Metalock, part of MAN Diesel.
CT Offshore currently has four vessels in its fleet, a cable layer, a trenching and post-lay burial vessel, and two survey ships. There are no ships on order.
CT Offshore operates mainly in Northern Europe, and currently primarily in the UK.
“In the future we know that the German and French regions will be very important due to the overall EU goals for implementing renewable energy,” Hansen says of future intentions. He is very bullish on the coming 10 years of offshore wind power developments in the EU.
In July 2011, the Danish offshore wind transport and installation contractor turbine installer A2SEA acquired a 29% share interest in CT Offshore. A2SEA increased its shareholding additionally in the company to 67% in January last year.
Changes following the deal have been relatively minimal, says Hansen. There is now an increased focus on long-term projects, compared to earlier times, where focus was mainly on the spot market and CT Offshore were the experts to call when something went wrong. “Today we work much closer together with A2SEA with the aim to benefit from the synergies available in our two companies and areas of business,” Hansen concludes. [11/10/13]
