Spain's Windar exits JV with Severstal for production of wind turbine towers

ROSTOV-ON-DON. Jan 10 (Interfax) - Spain's Windar Renovables S.L. has withdrawn from ownership in wind turbine tower manufacturer Windarseverstal LLC (formerly VRS Towers LLC).

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, a 51% stake in the JV is owned by LLC New Solutions and Technologies (St. Petersburg), which specializes in the management of holding companies. Previously, this stake belonged to Windar Renovables S.L. The share of the other partner, Severstal, has remained unchanged at 49%.

New Solutions and Technologies LLC was registered in May 2023 with an authorized capital of 100,000 rubles. According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the sole owner of the company is its director Sergey Bobrov.

Severstal did not comment on the changes in the structure of co-owners of the JV.

Windarseverstal was established in Taganrog in 2018 as a tripartite JV of Severstal, Rusnano and Windar Renovables S.L. and was called Windar Towers. In 2021, Severstal increased its stake to 49% by buying out Rosnano's stake, and the JV changed its name to Windarseverstal in the same year.

Severstal said in 2023 that it was not giving up on projects in the renewable energy (RE) sector, despite the withdrawal of a number of companies from the Russian market. "We are ready to be a key partner of those integrators that will come to replace the companies that have unfortunately left," Dmitry Goroshkov, Severstal's director for energy companies and infrastructure projects, told Interfax last summer.

According to Goroshkov, Severstal's technological chain for the production of towers for wind turbines was primarily tied to orders from Vestas and Fortum, and now it is obviously being transformed.

In 2022, Windarseverstal LLC saw net profit to RAS in the amount of 102 million rubles, which is 12.5 times less than a year earlier. Revenue fell 4.5 times, to 920 million rubles. Data for 2023 have not yet been published.

Severstal in the summer of 2022 was included in the SDN List together with the main owner Alexei Mordashov and members of his family, Mordashov himself is also included in the European sanctions list. In 2023, Australia and the United Kingdom imposed sanctions against Severstal.