One of the world’s biggest windfarm developers will cut its workforce by a quarter in the next two years after a series of setbacks for the industry.
Danish wind giant Ørsted plans to remove about 2,000 positions from its 8,000-strong workforce by the end of 2027 through a combination of redundancies, natural attrition and selling off parts of its business.
The Oslo-headquartered company, which employs more than 1,200 workers in the UK, plans to make 500 redundancies by the end of the year, including 235 in its home market.
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Ørsted boss Rasmus Errboe set out his plan to shrink the company weeks after the Trump administration caused its share price to plunge to an all-time low by ordering an immediate halt to work on a near-complete windfarm off the coast of Rhode Island.
The developer, which is 50% owned by the Danish state, was forced to fundraise more than $9bn after the political hostility in the US made it more difficult to attract investors for its pipeline of projects.
The order to down tools dealt a blow to Ørsted, which earlier this year cancelled plans to build one of the UK’s largest offshore windfarms, saying it no longer made economic sense due to high inflation and soaring costs in the industry’s global supply chain.
Although a US court last month allowed the company to restart work on the Revolution Wind project in Rhode Island, Ørsted intends to refocus its business on Europe’s offshore wind sector – and select markets in Asia – once it has completed its existing pipeline of global projects.
Rasmus Errboe, chief executive of Ørsted, said on Thursday that the group needed to be “more efficient and flexible”.
He said: “This is a necessary consequence of our decision to focus our business and the fact that we’ll be finalising our large construction portfolio in the coming years – which is why we’ll need fewer employees.”
“At the same time, we want to create a more efficient and flexible organisation and a more competitive Ørsted, ready to bid on new value-accretive offshore wind projects,” he said.
The company’s market value has increased slightly since it fell to all-time lows of 99.54 Danish kroner in August, but remains 53% lower this time last year. Its share price fell to 119DKK (£13.8) on Thursday, down 2.6% from the day before.
