Engineering group Monadelphous turns to renewables after resources boom ends

ASX-listed engineering company Monadelphous Group, which made a motza and then nearly lost it all again in the Australia’s resources construction industry, has signalled a shift into the renewable energy market, through a joint venture with ZEM Energy.

The two companies – ZEM is a private Newcastle-based clean energy project development company – have formed a renewable energy focused joint venture called Zenviron, which has already won its first job on one of Australia’s biggest wind farms.

For Monadelphous, the new company marks a key milestone in its strategy to expand into new infrastructure markets – namely the 6,000MW of new renewable energy capacity that need to be built around Australia by 2020 to meet the RET – after a slump in its traditional mining and minerals market.

For ZEM, Monadelphous brings scale and major project development experience.

“The team at ZEM Energy have extensive experience in the Australian renewables sector, having had direct involvement in close to half of Australia’s 35 large scale wind farm developments,” said Monadelphous managing director Rob Velletri.

ZEM Energy co-founder, Nicholas Perrott, said the company had tendered for renewable energy projects representing a sizeable share of the market for current projects which, if successful, would be executed by Zenviron.

“We are pleased to announce that Zenviron has been selected as preferred tenderer for the provision of the balance of plant associated with CWP Renewables’ Sapphire Wind Farm,” he said.

“With 16 large-scale wind farm projects currently planned for development over the next two years, Zenviron is well-placed to gain significant market share in the renewable energy markets in Australia and New Zealand.”

Zenviron will be led ZEM’s general manager of operations, Carl Keating, from a head office in Newcastle.