With effect from April 1, CS Wind Offshore has brought in Carsten Hallund Slot as project director. This means that the South Korean-owned foundation manufacturer, which completed the acquisition of the now defunct Bladt a month ago, has its entire management team in place.

”Carsten joins with extensive experience in developing supply chains - e.g. tower production - realizing offshore wind projects, facilitating global collaborations with e.g. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, as well as cultivating new opportunities and markets including South Korea, where he also met and collaborated with CS Wind many years ago,” CS Wind Offshore writes.

The project director’s extensive experience comes primarily from one place: Since 2010 and until the change, Carsten Hallund Slot has been employed by Vestas.

First at the now defunct Vestas Towers, which was sold to the Chinese company Titan in 2012, then as a key employee in connection with the offshore wind division’s joint venture with the Japanese company MHI, where he also spent the period 2019-21 as Head of Business Development. Since the Vestas buyback, he has also held senior positions in the offshore wind business.

In CS Wind Offshore’s nine-member executive board, he is the only one who comes from Vestas’ offshore wind business. This is in relatively stark contrast to the previous management team, where the CEO, the CTO, the sales director and the legal director all had a background at MHI Vestas and/or Vestas Offshore.

However, there is one person in the boardroom with whom he can talk about old times at the wind turbine manufacturer. Rikke Tikjøb Christiansen, who has a job title of Head of People and Culture, was Communications Director at Vestas until 2015, before moving on to Maersk Oil, which became Total Energies, before joining the North Jutland-based manufacturer two years ago.

The rest of the management team consists of co-CEO Henrik Olesen, whose past experience includes Svendborg Brakes, sales director Casper Toft, who was with Fred Olsen before moving to the foundation manufacturer at the beginning of last year, and the accountant-trained CFO Thomas Møller Nielsen, who has been with the former Bladt since moving from PWC in 2016.

Finally, CS Wind Offshore has hired a veritable triumvirate of operations directors. Søren Schlott Mikkelsen has been given responsibility for TPs, while Andreas Wojcik will head the substation business. Both have a history with Man, among others. While the South Korean owner himself has brought Johnny Jung, who is operations director for monopiles, and finally top manager Joseph Oh.