Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation has bought a stake in the family-run monopile producer EEW Offshore Wind Holding. The transaction will have a commercial effect from July 1 and will be completed at the end of December 2024, subject to legal and regulatory requirements. As one of the main reasons for the stake acquisition, Sumitomo pointed to the European offshore wind power development target being expected to rise to 164GW by 2030 and 549GW by 2050, and the demand for monopiles is forecast to increase from 650 thousand tons per year in 2023 to exceed 1m tons per year in 2026. EEW Offshore Wind Holding is EEW Group’s newly founded holding company which puts together the monopile business with EEW SPC which operates the production site in Rostock and AWS Schäfer which does associated mechanical engineering activities. Following the completion of the transaction, a newly founded service company called EEW Management Services will take over the duties and services provided by EEW Holding. The group will also organise its business activities according to business areas through two additional holding companies – EEW Pipe Solutions Holding and EEW AOS Holding. The existing management of the group of companies will remain in place. In the future, EEW Holding will be a purely asset-managing company, and will no longer provide services nor will not act as a parent company. The company name will be changed to DiScho Vermögensverwaltung GmbH & Co. Although the size of the Sumitomo stake was not revealed, EEW Group revealed that the majority of shares will remain with the owning family. “This investment aligns with our commitment to contributing to green transformation and global shift to renewable energy,” said Takuro Horikoshi, general manager of steel products at Sumitomo Corporation. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1_95_0_1_2'); }); TagsGermany Japan Offshore Wind