The British company that provides the huge jack-up vessels that plant giant wind turbine towers on the bed of the North Sea has been sold by Riverstone Holdings for £535 million.
Seajacks, originally a Norwegian company, is the business behind the monster wind installation ships named Leviathan and Kraken.
Yesterday it emerged that it had been bought by Marubeni, the Japanese trading company, in league with a Tokyo government innovation investment fund.
Riverstone Holdings, the alternative energy investment house, counts Lord Browne of Madingley among its directors. The former BP boss joined the company after his departure from the oil major amid a perjury scandal.
Riverstone is a backer of Cuadrilla, the shale gas explorer which has been linked to causing earthquakes in Lancashire. Last year Riverstone sold one of Brazil’s most advanced ethanol plants — producing the motor fuel alternative to petrol and diesel from sugar cane — for £425 million to Lord Brown’s old colleagues at BP.
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Seajacks, which is based in East Anglia, was bought by Riverstone and its management two years ago in a deal said to be valued at $205 million (£130 million). The company has migrated from providing vessels servicing the North Sea oil and gas industry to providing the ships without which the offshore wind industry cannot exist.
Marubeni aims to take advantage of Seajacks’ expertise. The trading house last year spent £200 million on a 49.9 per cent stake in Gunfleet Sands off the coast of Essex, one of the largest offshore windfarms in the world. Marubeni is also involved in wind projects in Japan, Canada and Australia.
Blair Ainslie, the managing director of Seajacks UK, said: “We expect to announce the commencement of construction of new vessels in the very near future to take advantage of the significant business opportunities we are seeing.”