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Business Wire
13-05-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Saildrone Closes $60M Financing to Bring Maritime Autonomy to Europe
COPENHAGEN, Denmark--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Saildrone, the global leader in maritime autonomy, today announced the closing of a $60 million investment round led by EIFO, the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark. The investment will be used to bring Saildrone technology to Europe to address the urgent need for maritime security for critical infrastructure and wider defense applications. "Our goal is to provide 24/7, year-round coverage for all critical infrastructure within the Baltic and North Sea, safeguarding these highly valuable installations for current and future generations." – Saildrone founder and CEO Richard Jenkins Share The Baltic, North Sea, and European Arctic waters are currently facing unprecedented threats, and the need for persistent maritime domain awareness has never been greater. Saildrone's extreme endurance unmanned surface vehicles utilize sophisticated sensors, combined with proprietary AI algorithms, to give a full picture of the maritime environment above and below the sea surface. 'I am thrilled to partner with EIFO and the Danish government to establish Saildrone's European headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark,' said Richard Jenkins, Saildrone's founder and CEO. 'Denmark's unique geographic and political position at the heart of northern Europe makes it the perfect place to establish our European headquarters and operational hub. Working initially with the Danish Armed Forces, we plan to roll out Saildrone's maritime intelligence services to multiple NATO countries during the course of the year. Our goal is to provide 24/7, year-round coverage for all critical infrastructure within the Baltic and North Sea, safeguarding these highly valuable installations for current and future generations.' In addition to EIFO, other participants in the round included existing investors Lux Capital, Washington Harbor Partners, Crowley, and Academy Securities, joined by new investors Pinegrove, BZH Capital, What If Ventures, and Calm Ventures. 'We are thrilled to invest in Saildrone and subsequently that Denmark has been chosen as the center for Saildrone's European activities. Saildrone is a leading company in a rapidly growing market, and gaining access to this technology can become critical for both Denmark's and Europe's security. We expect Saildrone will have an impact on both the Danish defense industry and the Danish challenges with surveillance in the Arctic and counteracting sabotage in Danish waters—at a fraction of the cost of a patrol ship,' said Peder Lundquist, CEO of EIFO. Saildrone will deploy the first four Saildrone Voyagers in the Baltic Sea in June 2025, under contract to the Danish Armed Forces. About Saildrone Saildrone is a maritime defense and oceanographic survey company creating a paradigm shift in how navies, governments, and commercial organizations obtain the real-time, accurate data required to monitor the maritime domain. Powered primarily by renewable wind and solar energy, Saildrone's fleet of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) provides long-duration operations measured in months, not days. Saildrone USVs carry sophisticated sensors combined with proprietary AI algorithms to give a full picture of the maritime environment above and below the sea surface, supporting border protection, critical infrastructure security, and hydrographic survey. Saildrone has sailed more than 2,000,000 nautical miles from the High North to the Southern Ocean and spent over 50,000 days at sea in the harshest ocean conditions on the planet.
The Guardian
07-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Danish firm shelves huge UK windfarm project over rising costs
One of the UK's largest planned offshore windfarms has been cancelled by its developer, the Danish wind power company Ørsted, as a result of higher costs and greater risk. The fourth phase of the huge Hornsea windfarm development, located off the Yorkshire coast, was expected to include 180 giant turbines, capable of generating the equivalent of enough green electricity to power 1m homes. However, Ørsted's chief executive, Rasmus Errboe, said in a statement to investors it was discontinuing the development: 'The combination of increased supply chain costs, higher interest rates, and increased execution risk have deteriorated the expected value creation of the project.' As a result, the company expects to incur breakaway costs of between 3.5bn and 4.5bn Danish kroner (£399m-£513m). The final investment decision for the project was due later this year. The cancellation marks the latest financial hit for Ørsted, after soaring costs forced it to scrap two major windfarm developments off the north-east coast of the US in late 2023, at a cost of £3bn, cutting hundreds of jobs. The company, which is majority owned by the Danish government, has previously reined in other plans to expand its offshore wind business amid rising costs facing the global wind power industry. Developers have been facing increased costs, which were triggered by higher inflation and interest rates, combined with problems in the global offshore wind supply chain. Ørsted said on Wednesday that the wind industry remained 'challenged in the short-term with headwinds relating to supply chain, regulatory, and macroeconomic developments'. Since taking office in January, the US president, Donald Trump, has expressed strong opposition to offshore wind. However, Ørsted said the long-term outlook for offshore was 'strong due to the increasing global electricity demand, a strengthened focus on energy security and affordability through renewables, and improved framework conditions in several major markets'. The Hornsea 4 project received the green light from the last government in July 2023. With a capacity of 2.6GW, it was the second-largest windfarm to receive government approval, after the Hornsea 3 project, which has a 2.8GW capacity and is expected to be completed in 2027. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion The first two phases of the Hornsea development are already operational. Ørsted's latest project cancellation comes after a turbulent time for the company, which resulted in it implementing a restructuring plan in 2024, while it cancelled dividend payouts to shareholders for the 2023-25 financial years in an attempt to bolster its finances. Its market value has plunged by about 80% since its peak in 2021. The Hornsea 4 cancellation came as the company reported a first-quarter operating profit that was above expectations. At the time of its construction, Hornsea 2 was the world's highest-capacity offshore windfarm. It generates enough energy to power more than 1.4m homes, and covers an area of 178 square miles.
New York Times
06-02-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Green Energy Ambitions of European Companies Take a Beating
Rasmus Errboe, the new chief executive of the Danish offshore wind developer Orsted, sounded as if he had inherited a mess as he explained a 25 percent paring of the company's investment plans on Thursday. Over the past two years, Orsted has backed away from some huge wind projects it planned to build off the East Coast of the United States, notably off New Jersey, because of delays, inflation and higher interest rates. Now, President Trump's aversion to offshore wind farms threatens to complicate the two big projects off New York and Rhode Island that Orsted says it is still committed to completing. 'We are working relentlessly to minimize the risks given the market conditions and the economic climate,' Mr. Errboe said. 'I'm not able to hand out any guarantees.' The downshift at Orsted, one of Europe's flagship renewable energy developers, came just a day after Equinor, the Norwegian energy giant that has been a large investor in renewable energy, said it would cut planned spending on low-emission projects to $5 billion, from $10 billion, over the next three years. 'The energy transition is moving slower than expected,' Anders Opedal, chief executive of Equinor, said Wednesday at a meeting in London to discuss the company's strategy. Equinor has options other than renewable energy, on which the company reported a $100 million loss in the fourth quarter of 2024. The company's overall earnings, largely from oil and gas in Norwegian waters, brought in adjusted earnings to $7.9 billion for the quarter. But large European energy companies are not so much giving up on wind, solar and other low carbon technologies as much as applying the brakes to what had sometimes seemed a race to pile into new projects. Orsted, for instance, bet heavily on the United States as the next big offshore wind market, forcing the company into retreat when the wager soured. On Thursday, write-offs led the company to report a loss of about 6 billion Danish krone for the fourth quarter of 2024. After a relentless battering of the company's stock price, which has fallen by more than 50 percent in three years, the board decided on Friday to replace Mads Nipper, the chief executive, with Mr. Errbroe, his deputy. The weakness at Orsted has attracted potential suitors looking to invest in Orsted's large renewables portfolio at what seems like a low price. 'We are used to cycles from oil and gas, and, clearly, we see that in offshore wind,' Torgrim Reitan, chief financial officer of Equinor, said in an interview. He added that the current travails were a 'good time' for offshore wind operators to improve themselves. Acting on this theory, Equinor acquired a 10 percent stake in Orsted, which is controlled by the Danish government, in October. Orsted's stock has since declined sharply, but it rose on Thursday. Wind executives say some challenges like inflation have eased, but the arrival of the Trump administration has raised a further caution flag over projects in the United States. 'I think the offshore has come to a full stop more or less with immediate effect,' Henrik Andersen, chief executive of Vestas, the Danish wind turbine maker, told analysts Wednesday. Mr. Andersen was optimistic that Vestas would be able to continue to sell its onshore wind turbines, a much larger business for the company, in the United States. He said that the company had orders for its factories through this year and into next, and that land-based wind farms were often the quickest sources of energy generation to build for uses like data centers. 'Many people are still sticking to their projects,' he said. Indeed, Vestas has seemed to be coming out of a long profit drought. On Thursday, the company reported 1.1 billion euros in gross profit on 6.1 billion euros in revenue, a performance Mr. Andersen called the best since 2017, which he credited to the land-based turbine business.
