Aberdeen's Wood seals Canadian turbine unit sale in £50m deal

Wood, the Aberdeen-headquartered energy and engineering services group, has completed the sale of its joint venture interest in TransCanada Turbines in a $67 million (£51m) deal.

The Sir Ian Wood House offices in Aberdeen which are home to the global energy and engineering services group. Picture: Simon Price

The sale, to joint venture partner TC Energy, forms part of the group’s focus on “portfolio optimisation” and the cash proceeds will be used to reduce debt and accelerate progress towards Wood’s target leverage.

The TransCanada Turbines business delivers overhaul, repair and maintenance services on industrial gas turbines for an international client base. It is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta with field service offices around the world.

David Kemp, Wood’s chief financial officer, said: “Our focus on portfolio optimisation is driven by our strategic objective of building a premium, differentiated, higher margin business focused on energy and built environment markets.

“The sale of our interest in TransCanada Turbines will also make a positive contribution towards achieving our leverage target.”

In August, Wood swung to a first-half loss and scrapped its interim dividend after the slump in the oil price forced it to cut thousands of jobs.

However, chief executive Robin Watson said the business was benefiting from its diversification in recent years with “relative resilience” in areas such as chemicals and renewables.

The changes have seen Wood become less dependent on an upstream oil and gas market that just five years ago accounted for the bulk of the business.

No interim dividend is being declared while uncertainty arising from the Covid-19 crisis and oil price volatility persists, the group told investors at the time of the results.

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