Wind farm installation firm A2Sea has taken a controlling stake in Danish cable installer CT Offshore.
The move follows an initial acquisition of 29% in CT by A2Sea in July last year and sees its shareholding increase to 67%.
Both A2Sea and CT Offshore are presently servicing all customers in the heavily growing offshore wind market and this will not be changed, said A2Sea.
A2Sea, which is owned by DONG Energy Renewables and Siemens Wind Power, said the alliance was “a strengthening of the development that the offshore wind installation business needs in order to ensure an even better competitiveness compared to other energy sources in future”.
Jens Frederik Hansen, chief executive at A2Sea said: “We see a great potential in this company which works within an area of the offshore wind installation business where bottleneck problems are frequent.
“CT Offshore has proven that they master the area and we therefore see a great potential in the company for the years ahead.
“The co-operation between our companies comes natural as we supplement each other within installation and service of offshore wind farms, with A2Sea’s leading position within foundation and wind turbine generator installation and CT Offshore’s position within Array cable installation and survey.”
The remaining 33% of the shares are still owned by CT Offshore’s founder and chief executive Paw Cortes.
The company will stay at its present address in Odense, Denmark. and Mr Cortes continues as chief executive.
He said: “Today CT Offshore is at a development stage where A2SEA was at a few years ago.
“Competences and knowledge in the two companies supplement each other perfectly and with this cooperation we have created a solid and wide platform in the installation and service market for offshore wind.
“CT Offshore is happy for this new co-operation and look forward to continuing our growth both as to number of employees and tonnage.”
A2Sea added that it has on order a new large installation vessel for delivery in 2012.
A2Sea has subsidiaries in Germany and the UK and employs 300 people.
