Powin, the Portland-area grid-scale battery maker that’s among the country’s leading energy storage players, has made a move to extend its reach.
The company announced an investment from the venture arm of Samsung C&T, a sprawling South Korea-based conglomerate that was the contractor on the world’s tallest structure, among other projects.
Terms were not disclosed, with the stake described only as a “minority interest” that came with “strategic equity funding.”
Powin early last year sold a controlling interest to private equity investors in a $100 million deal that kept its existing management team in place.
“We are pleased to establish a strategic and forward-looking partnership with Samsung C&T as we accelerate our international growth,” Powin CEO Geoff Brown said in a news release. “The long-term relationships that Samsung C&T has built with customers across the globe and their project execution experience and reputation will be instrumental as we enter new markets.”
Samsung C&T has 17,000 employees and dozens of subsidiaries. Its Trading & Investment group builds power plants, and the company came under pressure in 2020 for its work on new coal plants in South Korea and Vietnam. That led it to announce in October that it would get out of coal when its then-existing contracts wrapped up.
Renewables have become a bigger focus, though fossil fuels aren’t out of the picture totally: Samsung C&T and a Vietnamese firm in March won a nearly $1 billion contract to build Vietnam’s first liquefied natural gas power plant.
“Samsung C&T has enhanced its competitiveness in the global BESS (battery energy storage system) market through strategic partnership with Powin, and furthermore, this agreement is expected to be part of strengthening Samsung's global strategy to move forward eco-friendly business portfolios in the renewable sector,” the company’s executive vice president, Byungsoo Lee, said in a statement.
Powin, with offices in Portland and Tualatin, has grown in the last five years to become one of the nation’s largest grid-scale battery companies. It was No. 2 on the Business Journal’s list of fastest-growing private companies from 2018 to 2020 as revenue rose from $18 million to $114 million, and had about 130 Oregon-based employees as of early this year.
Powin early this year announced its latest-generation battery system will be assembled in Mexico as it shifts and consolidates production closer to home — and its main customer base in the U.S. — from Asia.
