Areva has announced the acquisition of a 51% stake in Multibrid, a designer and manufacturer of multi-megawatt off-shore wind turbines based in Germany.
With this acquisition, Areva has entered into a joint venture with Prokon Nord, a German off-shore wind turbine and biomass plant developer and current owner of Multibrid. This transaction values Multibrid at €150 million. Areva plans to rapidly further develop Multibrid's activities by giving the company access to its industrial resources, financial base and international commercial network. With this stake in Multibrid, Areva aims to increase its presence on the offshore wind market that meets land settlement requirements and that should grow significantly in the years to come (from 300MW in Europe today to an expected 1,400MW by 2011). As an exclusive supplier of Prokon Nord, Multibrid will participate in projects such as Borkum West (30MW), the first offshore project in Germany, Borkum West 2 (400MW), and Côte d'Albâtre (105MW), the first offshore wind farm project in France.
