Ørsted reducing headcount globally

Developer Ørsted plans to reduce staffing levels by about 2,000, employing roughly 6,000 personnel globally by the end of 2027. Five hundred staff will be let go during the current quarter.

The company plans to focus increasingly on offshore wind and the European market, following issues with its projects offshore the US East Coast.

“This is a necessary consequence of our decision to focus our business and the fact that we’ll be finalizing our large construction portfolio in the coming years—which is why we’ll need fewer employees.”

—Rasmus Errboe, CEO, Ørsted

The company also needs to cut costs for developing, constructing and operating offshore wind farms, he continued, so that it can “be rightsized in parallel with the decline in construction activities." 

Errboe added, “We’re fully committed to finalizing our 8.1-GW construction portfolio across three continents—Ørsted’s largest to date. At the same time, we’re building a more financially robust and competitive company with solid earnings, which will increase as we complete our projects.”

Once all planned measures have been implemented, the company expects to achieve annual cost savings of about DKK2 billion ($310 million) from 2028 onward.