Denmark Supports Vestas’ Australian Project, TPI Sells Auto Business, Nabrawind and LiftWerx Receive Investment

TPI Composites sells its automotive business, Fortescue invests in Nabrawind's innovative wind turbine technology, LiftWerx receives a majority equity investment from TowerBrook Capital Partners, and Denmark's Export and Investment Fund supports Vestas' involvement in Australia's Golden Plains Wind Farm. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum, and this is your NewsFlash. Newsflash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at intelstor.com. TPI Composites has decided to sell its automotive business unit to investment firm, Clear Creek Investments. This divestiture aligns with TPI's strategy to focus on its core wind energy business. The sale is expected to improve TPI's monthly cash flow by about 1. 7 million over the remainder of 2024. TPI composites accounted for around 33 percent of all onshore wind blades on a megawatt basis globally, excluding China. Now, Phil, it does seem like wind energy companies that have been dabbling in associated industries are trying to get back out of them. Philip Totaro: To a certain extent, yes. It's, it's interesting because we go through these periods where companies like to be able to vertically integrate in any one industry vertical or, or potentially dabble in, in others. But the timing of this is interesting in the context of. TPI wants to be able to strengthen their position and their relationship with GE, who obviously is going through, some tumult with LM wind power as they kind of right size that, that company. TPI doesn't want to lose GE's business because they're, quite highly dependent on it. And with the rise of kind of Chinese wind turbine manufacture, blade manufacturers, they have increased competition. In the world for blade manufacturing that they didn't have, even going back a few years, so divesting the automotive business segment is fascinating that it's going to leave them to focus on the core wind energy segment. It hasn't been, the best of times for them recently, but hopefully this allows them to continue. Growing their, their footprint in within the industry and throughout the rest of the world. Joel Saxum: I see this as a gamble, right? Because a lot of times if you are very dependent on one revenue stream, i. e. TPI, building blades, If you have another, and that building with that being tumultuous, right? There's contracts come up, they come down, there's TPI, there's blade issues, you gotta have warranty claims, all these different things. So that's a pretty, kind of a risky business model. If you have another thing it's just like diversifying your portfolio, right? If you have another entity or another silo that makes money, Or is, is doing decent and supporting, I think, I would think you'd keep it at this point in time to be able to kind of like flatten out your revenues. Now, if you're a company that's a a large entity where you're like a, and I'm, I know they're connected business wise, but I'm saying just GE as example where aerospace and health and all these different things. Yeah, at that point in time, it makes sense to silo off some things and focus in. But if it's TPI and you're just doing blades a...