AC883 Joins Muehlhan Wind Service

**Allen Hall** (0:00)
Canada's wind market needs service providers who can handle the biggest jobs, not just the routine ones. As the fleet gets older, that means more crane work, gearbox exchanges, and full rotor replacements.
This week, we welcome back Lars Bentsen, founder of Ac883 Renewable Energy Services, now part of Muehlhan Wind Service. Lars explains how the acquisition brings lifting and installation capability alongside his blatant OEM work, giving Canadian owners one team for both.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:33)
Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow.

**Allen Hall** (0:46)
Lars, welcome back to the podcast.

**Lars Bendsen** (0:48)
Thank you so much, Allen.

**Allen Hall** (0:49)
A lot has happened since I talked to you last.
I saw some of the announcements on LinkedIn. I was really excited for you. So, Ac883 has news.

**Lars Bendsen** (1:01)
We have news. Well, it's about a month ago now, but yeah, things have been going very well.

**Allen Hall** (1:06)
Muehlhan has acquired Ac883, which is a company you started how many years ago?

**Lars Bendsen** (1:11)
I started Ac883 12 years ago.

**Allen Hall** (1:14)
Wow, okay.

**Lars Bendsen** (1:15)
It was from my dining room table, basically.

**Allen Hall** (1:19)
And it's grown to quite the business over time.

**Lars Bendsen** (1:23)
Yeah, we have been expanding, especially the last five years after my son came in. And he has been the main driver. So we're expanding like crazy the last five years. And well, getting older, and now we are at a kind of point where we should usually expand more. And then when, I'm just saying again, Muehlhan is one of the biggest companies in the world in our industry. Looked our way.
Then it was an easy decision to make, actually, very easy.

**Allen Hall** (1:55)
Well, Muehlhan is well-known for being a leader in the ISP world in Europe.
A little bit in America, they're still making a presence here. That's why they wanted to talk to you, I'm sure, because Ac883 has a nice Canadian market. People trust you and rely upon you because you bring the quality people over. Plus, you have all of the surplus. You have all the resources to get to parts that you can't acquire in Canada and the United States. You know who to call. It's part of that data connection. Well, that makes a lot of sense because I do think as we see the industry mature, those quality companies like Ac883 are very valuable. They see them as being a huge resource to the industry.

**Lars Bendsen** (2:42)
I mean, again, you said it makes us really proud that a big company like that is looking our way. And it's been a smooth transition. As you were talking about, based on the industry's maturing, meaning also big is getting bigger, and you need more horsepower, you need more muscle.

**Allen Hall** (2:57)
Right.

**Lars Bendsen** (2:58)
And we also needed that because we're expanding, there's not much we can do. And while we're all getting older, so at a certain time, we have to do something.

**Allen Hall** (3:06)
Sure.
Sure. But it comes at a point where you've proven yourself time and time again. I mean, how many times have you grown an industry in your lifetime? You've done it many, many times. That's why Ac883 has always been the light upon source for so many things. Now, Muehlhan brings a lot of advantages and a lot of horsepower to the organization, because as you have gotten larger, you realize there's a lot of back office, things that need to happen, safety, gear, equipment. It's not just putting technicians on ropes out on site. There's all the management of that. That's where size matters.

**Lars Bendsen** (3:46)
Size matters also, the whole health and safety perspective. So of course, the matter of you putting more staff behind the scenes than actually in front of the scenes. So it's just extremely expensive. And also now we expand on our offering. It was under the Muehlhan umbrella.
I mean, everything from the now major component is changing, we didn't do it before. We decided before, anything we lead a crane for, we do not do.

**Allen Hall** (4:07)
Right, I remember that.

**Lars Bendsen** (4:07)
It's a complete different animal in the health and safety perspective, equipment, et cetera. And now in Canada, the company we're going to merging with, that's what they're doing. They're really strong in lifting and really strong in the installation of turbine to do with wind farms.
Well, we are strong on the OEM side.

**Allen Hall** (4:25)
Right.

**Lars Bendsen** (4:26)
And we are stronger on the, our primary customer is the asset owners.