Siva breezes into wind energy; Looks at ethanol fuel

Venkatachari Jagannathan
01 September 2006

Chennai: The wind always blows in favour of C Sivasankaran, chairman, Sterling Infotech group. The corporate trader who spots opportunities first and creates value by entering that domain and exit at an attractive price levels has done it again. This time he has breezed into the global wind energy segment.

The Sterling Infotech group, through its Mauritius outfit, Avis Ventures Limited has acquired a 40-per cent stake in the Finnish wind turbine manufacturer WinwinD Oy.

The €22-million deal advised by Standard Chartered Bank is in two parts. Avis Ventures acquired 36.36 per cent control in WinwinD by pumping in €20 million. The balance 3.64 per cent was acquired from some shareholders for €2 million. The other main shareholders of WinwinD include Proventia Group Oy, Head Invest Oy, Powest Oy, Finnish Industry Investment Ltd, and Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company who are large institutional investors in Finland.

The six year old €16-million turnover WinwinD supplies one and 3-MW wind turbines based on low-speed technology. With offices in Oulu and Helsinki and assembly plants in li and Loviisa in Finland, WinwinD has subsidiaries in Portugal, Estonia and China.

At the time of acquisition by Avis Ventures the Finnish company had an order book position for supply of 75 MW of wind turbines worth €75 million. Hoping to close this year with a turnover of €45 million, WinwinD has plans to venture into new markets like India, Brazil, some markets in the European Union as well as South America.