Baker Hughes is expanding its turbomachinery portfolio with the acquisition of the power generation division of the UK’s BRUSH Group from US-based middle-market private-equity investors One Equity Partners (OEP).
The acquisition, announced on 8 August, boosts Baker Hughes’ core turbomachinery portfolio with new lines of electromechanical equipment—electric generators, synchronous condensers, electric motors, and control systems—thus advancing the company’s quest to become a leading decarbonization solutions provider to the gas industry including liquefied natural gas (LNG.)
OEP acquired BRUSH in June 2021 and will continue to own its remaining business divisions after the expected closing in Q4 2022 on the power generation division’s spinoff to Baker Hughes.
“OEP recognized BRUSH as a leader within the power generation equipment and services sector when we acquired the business last year,” OEP’s managing director, Steve Lunau, said in a news release. He added that the private-equity firm will continue to “support and grow BRUSH’s remaining power distribution and networks business” moving forward.
With the acquisition, Baker Hughes expects to further optimize its supply chain with new manufacturing capabilities in electromechanics and an expanded customer base in the industrial and energy sectors.
BRUSH’s technology complements Baker Hughes existing e-LNG offering and is already “a long-established and trusted supplier,” in the words of Rod Christie, executive vice president of turbomachinery and process solutions at Baker Hughes.
The marriage, added Christie, “will expand our core electrification capabilities and scope, further enhance our supply chain, and reach new industrial customers” with integrated solutions as “the need for electrification in the hard-to-abate and natural gas sectors plays an increasingly critical role in accelerating the path to net zero.”
In Baker Hughes’s Q2 earnings call, CEO Lorenzo Simonelli noted that the company’s turbomachinery business is on track to generate from $8 billion to $9 billion in orders in 2022 and that 2023 looks optimistic largely because of US projects.
Simonelli singled out Venture Global LNG’s final investment decision (FID) at the end of May on the Plaquemines Phase 1 project in Louisiana as well as Cheniere’s FID on Corpus Christi Stage 3 in June. “We continue to expect 100 to 150 mpta of LNG FIDs over the next two years with additional FIDs in 2024 and 2025,” Simonelli said.
BRUSH operates in four facilities in the UK, Czech Republic, and the Netherlands, with aftermarket capabilities through service centers in the UK and the US, serving energy producers such as utility-scale power generators and upstream oil and gas producers.
The company’s roots date back to 1876, when its founder, Charles Francis Brush, invented his first “electric dynamo” and established the Anglo-American Brush Electric Light Corporation in London. He set up a second company in the US, Brush Electric Company, in 1880 which in 1891 became part of General Electric.
