If you have been reading the news headlines recently you are probably thinking the UK wind industry is beginning to follow the footsteps of the housing and financial industries. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth as this is still a very buoyant area of the renewables industry.
Major Offshore Wind developers such as Dong, Centrica, Eon, Rwe, SPR and Vattenfall have chosen to delay the consent/construction of multi-megawatt projects. Major turbine manufacturers such as Vestas and Gamesa have announced a large number of redundancies over the last 12-18 months. All of the above is causing an element of uncertainty within the industry but there are still a lot of companies looking to expand.
It is also becoming increasingly difficult to gain consent due to various environmental issues and it does not help when the government announced in July that subsidies for onshore wind farms would be reduced by 10%.
Even through this time of uncertainty, Taylor Hopkinson has witnessed an 80% increase in revenue in last 12 months and this is mainly down to repeat business with satisfied clients. We are working with a number of clients who have defined growth plans and are still actively looking to grow their Offshore wind teams.
We have recently completed two crucial retained search assignments for one of our global consultancy clients, securing for them a Grid Services Lead and Energy Director of Energy Asset Management and they will play a major part in achieving our client’s energy growth strategy, which is to grow from 60-120 in the next 2-3 years.
We are also exclusive partners for one of UKs fastest-growing, award-winning global consultancies, who are also planning to grow their Glasgow office from 90 to 180 in 12 months.
So, although the messages in the mainstream media are far from rosy, if you look further down the supply chain, many companies are pushing ahead with ambitious plans and hiring in significant numbers.
[Editor’s note: Neil Brown is a Consultant at Taylor Hopkinson Associates.]