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TAKKION Acquires Harvest Energy Services

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Acquisition Continues the Expansion of TAKKION’s Renewable Energy Operations and Maintenance Services 

DALLAS, Texas, May 3, 2022  — TAKKION TP&L Holdings LLC (“TAKKION” or the “Company”), a portfolio company of funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management, Inc. (NYSE: APO) (together with its consolidated subsidiaries, “Apollo”) today announced that it has acquired Broomfield, CO-based Harvest Energy Services, LLC (“Harvest”). Harvest is an independent services provider of operations and maintenance (“O&M”) solutions to the renewable energy industry.

TAKKION is a premier independent services provider supporting the energy transition. The acquisition of Harvest demonstrates the continued expansion of TAKKION’s capabilities in long-term O&M solutions for renewable energy markets. Harvest is TAKKION’s third significant acquisition in less than 18 months and expands TAKKION’s scale and capabilities in the wind services market.

Harvest acquisition expands TAKKION’s scale and capabilities in the wind services market

The Harvest team will join TAKKION’s leading logistics and O&M services companies: Transportation Partners and Logistics (“TP&L”), Global Specialized Services (“GSS”), RENEW, and AIRWAY SERVICES. The addition of Harvest will grow TAKKION’s wind O&M presence in North America, meaningfully enhancing TAKKION’s ability to provide comprehensive solutions for the evolving needs of the renewable energy supply chain. In particular, the Harvest acquisition expands TAKKION’s technical capabilities in blade repair, and adds a high throughput, state of the art training center in Broomfield, Colorado that will support continued hiring and job creation for the renewable energy industry.

“We are ecstatic to welcome Harvest to TAKKION. Harvest has a long history of performance and we are fortunate to incorporate the expertise of its employees into our businesses. We see compelling opportunities to expand the already market-leading scope of TAKKION’s services, leveraging Harvest’s skills and equipment. The acquisition of Harvest furthers our goal to be the strongest partner to companies across the renewable energy industry.” said Jim Orr, CEO of TAKKION.

Vinson & Elkins LLP acted as legal counsel to TAKKION in this transaction. Kirkland & Ellis LLP acted as legal counsel to Harvest.

ABOUT TAKKION

TAKKION is a premier independent service provider of logistics, O&M, and technical repair and remanufacturing services to the renewable energy industry. With the industry’s largest network of people and assets across North America, TAKKION is uniquely positioned to support and optimize the growth and lifecycle of renewable energy. Our brands TP&L, GSS, RENEW, and AIRWAY SERVICES work together seamlessly to deliver quality, performance, and efficiency for our customers. We live by our core values of safety, integrity, transparency, and putting our people & customers first. To learn more about how TAKKION is Moving Energy Forward, visit www.TAKKION.com/

ABOUT APOLLO

Apollo is a global, high-growth alternative asset manager. In our asset management business, we seek to provide our clients excess return at every point along the risk-reward spectrum from investment grade to private equity with a focus on three business strategies: yield, hybrid, and equity. For more than three decades, our investing expertise across our fully integrated platform has served the financial return needs of our clients and provided businesses with innovative capital solutions for growth. Through Athene, our retirement services business, we specialize in helping clients achieve financial security by providing a suite of retirement savings products and acting as a solutions provider to institutions. Our patient, creative, and knowledgeable approach to investing aligns our clients, businesses we invest in, our employees, and the communities we impact, to expand opportunity and achieve positive outcomes. As of December 31, 2021, Apollo had approximately $498 billion of assets under management. To learn more, please visit www.apollo.com.

Deedee’s 10 Years of Service

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Transportation Partners and Logistics is proud to announce that Deedee Pietzsch, the Director of Rail Logistics, is celebrating 10 years of service! 

Deedee said she’s “been here since the beginning” and that she got the job after being hired by one of TP&L’s original partners. A coincidental text message led her to be employee number five.

A current employee at the time stated to Deedee, “You have the operational skills, the organizational skills, and the work ethic, I can teach you the railroad piece.” So, she did, and immediately it was very interesting to Deedee. “You don’t ever really think about how things get from one place to another until you’re actually doing it. And when it comes to moving these wind turbines, it’s just fascinating.” Deedee noted.

“My background is not in transportation or logistics at all,” Deedee laughed. “I was in hospitality for years, but a lot of those operational skills and duties transferred over to this industry.” 

Deedee said that right before she began working for TP&L, she was running an appraisal management company, which seems unrelated, but that job gave her tools to effectively manage others. 

Deedee first began working as a rail analyst, focusing on day-to-day operations of implementing the rail schedule for a customer of TP&L. The tasks included waybilling, tracking and tracing trains, ordering train symbols, and notifying the customer and yards of train movement. She also worked as the inventory manager for TP&L’s yards, as well as all other yards the customer had product in.

“Now that we’ve grown and have so many yards with so many components on them, our Rail Team has grown to four. I have a dedicated Inventory Manager,” she stated, “a Rail Analyst and a Fixture and Rigging Manager now, too.” 

In her new role, she is now managing the overall rail schedule and equipment allocation/storage for the customer’s wind business.

“There are dedicated train sets that just carry the blades for the turbines, dedicated train sets just for the tower sections, the nacelles and the hubs, etc. Every one of those trains that are running; I manage the entire schedule for our customers.” 

It’s not just logistics that Deedee manages, though; it’s also people. 

“Stepping into this role, I also began managing people, which I never had to do before,” she revealed. “So that is a whole other set of skills and mindset to do that. And we all work from home, so we’re not together in an office. We’re not able to be together every day, so it’s important for me to keep that engagement up with them. Luckily, two of my three guys live within about 30 or 45 minutes of me. We all live close together, so once a month, at least, we’ll try to get together for lunch. Sometimes it’s a working lunch and sometimes it’s just a regular lunch, just so we can get together.” 

Deedee cares deeply about her employees and about her customers. 

“It’s like a family,” she said. “We take care of each other. We look out for each other. We help support each other.”

Congratulations to Deedee for 10 years of excellence. Here’s to another 10 years! 

Onward & Upward: The Beginnings of TP&L’s Uptower Maintenance Division

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When the powers-that-be at Transportation Partners & Logistics told Tyson Peterson that they wanted him to head a new division within the company, he jumped at the opportunity…even if he didn’t know what, exactly, he was jumping into.

Still, Peterson took on the task he was given and, in the span of approximately 18 months, he helped build the TP&L Uptower Maintenance Division.

The Uptower Maintenance Division is Transportation Partners & Logistics’ newest division, and it specializes in various different aspects of wind turbine work, and it includes a variety of different services, including wind turbine erection, maintenance projects, retrofitting, site support and troubleshooting on wind turbines, and more.

This division has done a lot of work in a very little amount of time, and much of its success can be traced to Peterson.

“It’s been amazing to be a part of something from the very get-go,” Peterson stated. “I actually started out my career with TP&L as a rigger at the Casper laydown yard. I soon advanced to the role of a foreman or assistant site manager at the Casper site and we had a very successful year. Then, the corporate management team asked if I would be interested in managing a new division. I asked what it was and they said it was going to be the Uptower Maintenance Division, so I said ‘Sign me up.’”

Originally, Peterson’s team was just himself and two other employees from the laydown yard. They trained for a period of time before serving as more of a support system for TP&L’s sister company, RENEW Energy. Following that, however, they began work on a maintenance project in Texas.

“At that time, we were probably only at about five employees and it was kind of undetermined on where we were going to go, direction-wise, with this division,” Peterson stated. “We were brand new to the Uptower side of things for TP&L and the future was unclear on where we were headed. But everything just fell in line. We secured that maintenance project in Texas and then last March we secured a project known as the ZF Gearbox Retro-Fit . After its successful completion, it opened the door for us to secure the several hundred turbine retro-fit projects that we are currently working on, in two different regions throughout the U.S.”

The ZF Gearbox Retro-Fit included several hundred wind turbines which showed Peterson and his bosses that more help was needed. In 18 months, the TP&L Uptower Maintenance Division went from 3 employees to 40.

“I didn’t expect everything to grow so fast,” Peterson said. “It was a very enjoyable challenge to be able to navigate through that and be able to juggle all of the various projects. I’m glad that we’ve come this far and I’m excited to see where we’re going in the next six months, to a year, to two years. I am just enamored with this division’s growth over the last 18 months. It’s turned into something so amazing, with all of the growing pains associated with it, all the triumphs, all the challenges; it’s good to see that we’ve successfully overcome those challenges and have been so successful.”

The division is very successful, and Peterson said it’s not because of him; it’s because of his technicians.

“I accepted this challenge and I accepted this position because I knew that deep down, I had what it took to take this on,” he stated. “But the growth of this division is solely reliant upon the work of my technicians out in the field. Their ability to exhibit professionalism and customer correspondence; these are the things I’ve preached to these guys and they have done an incredible job with it, from day one. We’ve gained a very good rapport with various site management teams out in the field. They’re impressed by our involvement. They’re impressed by our technicians’ work ethic and their punctuality. It’s just great to be a part of this team.”

The work that Peterson and his team do on a daily basis is why TP&L’s Uptower Maintenance Division has been the success that it is. To go from 3 employees to 40 in less than two years speaks not only to Peterson’s management style, but to the work the technicians do day in and day out.

It also speaks to Petersen’s managers; the men who were with him from the start of the very first project. Curtis Williams, Petersen’s Regional Manager, as well as Brad Elrod, his Sales Manager, were something of a Three Musketeers, all-for-one-one-for-all kind of team and Petersen said the projects would have been successful without Williams and Elrod.

“We three, since the beginning, have diligently worked very closely together and continue to do so operationally to ensure our forward progression,” Petersen said. “None of this would have ever been possible without their ever-continuing support.”

It really is a team approach, all around. From the managers to the technicians, everybody involved in the Uptower Maintenance Division work for each other, and with each other.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled to be a part of something, to be a part of what this has become,” he stated. “It is, by far, one of the greatest experiences that I have ever taken part in and now it’s onward and upward and I look forward to the future.”

Peterson and his team continue to exemplify everything that Transportation Partners & Logistics represents, and when it comes to the future of this new TP&L division, well…things are looking up.

Shana Anderson 10 Year Anniversary

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When Jim Orr co-founded Transportation Partners & Logistics, he needed somebody to work with the numbers. He needed somebody with intelligence and integrity; someone who could multitask various projects and solve countless problems that would undoubtedly arise from a company with such lofty undertakings. He needed somebody who could manage the finances of the company who manages the transportations, logistics, equipment, and cargo of countless windfarm and oil & gas projects throughout the United States.

He found that person in Shana Anderson.

Anderson is celebrating her 10th year at TP&L and, in those ten years, she has proven herself to be pivotal to its growth. As the Vice President of Finance and Administration, Anderson does it all.

“Obviously [the work I’ve done] has progressed over the years,” she said. “It started out as me just ‘doing the books,’ and then as we’ve grown as a team, I’ve been able to delegate some of the work. But it’s making sure the books have accurate and precise data. Our operations side is making all the magic, and it’s up to us to organize here on the accounting end so it all makes sense. I handle the tax side, too. With every endeavor that we take on, there’s a new line of taxes; whether it’s county, city, state, payroll-wise, sales tax, property tax, personal property tax, and more. We’re just making sure that, from a business side, we are absolutely taking care of everything and that we have no holes.”

Anderson also manages multiple insurance claims. She organizes the company’s health benefits and is the
liaison for the Human Resources Department to the employees and the top-level executives. She’s not just in charge of finance and administration for TP&L, either; she also handles those same duties for some of its sister companies and side-entities. She wouldn’t take on this responsibility if she didn’t love the job, however. And she wouldn’t work as hard as she does if she didn’t respect and admire the people with whom she works.

“I align with the characteristics of integrity that TP&L has,” Anderson said. “Jim [Orr] honors everything that is right and just; that’s the way he does business and I can align with that. It’s very easy to team up with someone or something that has the same characteristics and beliefs that you have. This business started on a handshake and that’s really unheard of in this age, even ten years ago. And I think that speaks volumes to Jim’s character and the belief that somebody else has in his integrity. There’s been a lot of growth throughout these ten years and I believe that never saying no is the reason for our ten years of success. We never say no. We say yes and then, on the backend, we figure out how to make it happen.”

Shana Anderson took a chance when she said ‘Yes’ to Jim Orr all those years ago. But it’s a chance that paid off in spades and it has made her a vital component of Transportation Partner & Logistics and all of its subsidiaries. Congratulations on ten years, Shana. Here’s to ten more.

TP&L Safety Award

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At Transportation Partners & Logistics, safety is the single most important aspect of our company and our culture. As proof of this, we need look no further than our site in Pueblo, Colorado. Our Pueblo yard just received an award for being injury free for 5 consecutive years.

“It’s been a group effort,” said Clint Murray, Site Manager for the Pueblo yard. “We started revamping our JSA (Job Safety Analysis) program, which is a meeting that the guys have every morning before they start work. It’s a way for everybody to get together and talk about the hazards and mitigations of everything they’re going to do on that particular day.”

The Job Safety Analysis program at TP&L (and all of our sister companies) is pivotal in making sure our employees stay safe. When they begin the day, our employees review each task and they are able to recognize, talk about, and plan for any potential hazards. The JSA has made people think about what they’re doing before, during, and after they do it. Similarly, our grassroots program allows site managers to speak with individual employees on a more personal level, to understand what the employee’s goals are, where they want to be, what they want to do, and how things are going to go.

“I’ve been in this industry a long time, and it’s an anomaly to go this long without any injuries,” Murray beamed. “Our biggest goal at the end of the day is making sure we’re keeping everybody safe and getting everybody home to their families at the end of the day, with their fingers intact. I don’t think there’s really just one specific thing that got us here; it’s the total combination of everything and everybody.”

NEWS RELEASE | Transportation Partners & Logistics Wins Major Wind OEM Project to Double Rail Transport

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TP&L Breaks Ground on Expanding Rail Services Pensacola, Florida

Rail System Expansion Keeps up With Clean Energy Demand

October 29, 2018 – Casper, Wyoming – Transportation Partners and Logistics, LLC (TP&L) announced today that it began a $4.1 million dollar construction project in Pensacola, Florida that will allow a major wind OEM to double its capability to rail machine heads and hubs at its Pensacola factory.  By reengineering its current rail system, the expansion will allow the company to load up to twenty rail cars per shift, up from its current limit of ten.  Construction began this week and completion is scheduled the first week of February, 2019. 

“In addition to maintaining our own storage and distribution facilities, TP&L specializes in managing other sites as well as consulting on construction for large projects such as this one,” said Jim Orr, president and a co-founder of TP&L.  “We are proud to have the opportunity to provide wind OEMs with distribution solutions to move large quantities of wind components quickly and efficiently.”

TP&L owns and operates distribution centers across North America including Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming, serving multiple industries including wind power with rail, port and trucking logistics support and management.

To stay connected to TP&L please visit: www.tpandl.com

About TP&L

Currently serving a variety of OEMs, project developers and supply companies, TP&L provides logistics and transportation management for a variety of industries across the entire supply chain.  Since 2012, TP&L’s unique one-stop-shop for logistics and management solutions has assisted more than 75 wind farms, multiple oil/gas drilling projects and agriculture throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico.  

TP&L’s team of in-house engineers are top-load certified and ready to take the lead when it comes to any logistical needs. From port to pad we deliver – economically, safely and on time.

# # #

Media Contacts:

Ashton Maxfield

Ashton@masterplancommunications.com

(949) 289-6493 

or

Kirsten Woodard

Kirsten@masterplancommunications.com

(714) 366-6003

NEWS RELEASE | CRAWLER CRANES

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Transportation Partners and Logistics Expands Capabilities
with Two Crane Purchases

June 18, 2018 – Casper, Wyoming – Transportation Partners and Logistics, LLC (TP&L) announced today that it has acquired two new cranes to further its reach in transporting of oversized and overweight cargo across the supply chain, including wind power and oil and gas projects throughout North America. These new purchases include a Liebherr LR 1300 SX crawler crane for its largest distribution center located in Garden City, Kansas and a Terex HC 285 crawler crane in its Enid, Oklahoma location, which was purchased through Wyoming Machinery Company. These acquisitions come as a result of the company’s visibility into future projects, such as wind turbines, where components are growing in size and will be to up to 62 meters in length as early as next year.

Left to Right: TP&L’s Founding Partners and Executive Management Shelli Stacey, Billy Brenton, Jim Orr and Justin Orr with the company’s new Liebherr LR 1300 SX crawler crane.

“TP&L is pleased to announce these most recent strategic crane acquisitions, as we are proudly an asset-based company, which will allow us to better bid and win jobs because our equipment is our own and we don’t have to rely on subcontractors to help us deliver the quality of service we extend to our customers,” said Jim Orr, president and a co-founder of TP&L. “As we look ahead to new opportunities and business ventures, these cranes will help us continue to focus on moving, storing and delivering our customer’s equipment on time and without error.”

With these recent purchases, TP&L will be able to extend its offload of wind tower components and transformers from rail to truck while in the yard, and will allow for exceptionally large equipment to be moved, stored or delivered to the job site on time. These cranes include jibs that will allow the company to diversify into new industries.

The TP&L Team with the new Liebherr LR 1300 SX crawler crane at the TP&L Distribution Center in Garden City, KS – the largest wind power component distribution center in North America.

With recent expansion of its location in Garden City and additional distribution centers in North Dakota, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska, the company serves multiple industries including wind power with rail, port and trucking logistics support and management.

To stay connected to TP&L please visit: www.tpandl.com

About TP&L
Currently serving a variety of OEMs, project developers and supply companies, TP&L provides logistics and transportation management for a variety of industries across the entire supply chain. Since 2012, TP&L’s unique one-stop-shop for logistics and management solutions has assisted more than 75 wind farms, multiple oil/gas drilling projects and agriculture throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico.

TP&L’s team of in-house engineers are top-load certified and ready to take the lead when it comes to any logistical needs. From port to pad we deliver – economically, safely and on time.

# # #

Media Contacts:
Ashton Maxfield
Ashton@masterplancommunications.com
(949) 289-6493
or
Kirsten Woodard
Kirsten@masterplancommunications.com
(714) 366-6003

Press Coverage | Heavy Lift

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Largest US wind power distribution hub opens

May 16 – The recent expansion of its location in Garden City, USA, has given Transportation Partners and Logistics (TP&L) the largest wind power component distribution centre in North America, the company claims.

With additional distribution centres in North Dakota, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Nebraska, the company serves multiple industries, including wind power, with rail, port and trucking logistics support and management.

With more than 630 acres (254.9 ha) in its Garden City location alone, the company’s distribution centres have, to date, provided assistance to more than 75 wind farms in North America and provide warehousing, indoor storage and logistical support for moving turbines and other wind energy generation components.

“TP&L has built a strong presence in wind power by providing complete logistics support for wind farms being built across all of North America, including Canada and Mexico,” said Shelli Stacey, director of rail logistics and a partner at the company.

TP&L claims to be one of the only companies that can store, deliver and maintain wind power facilities to an industry growing every day. Stacey adds: “We look forward to serving this community as the demand for wind power continues to grow.”

Press Coverage | Enid News

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ENID, Okla. — Transportation Partners and Logistics is now the largest storage and distribution company for wind components in the United States, Enid Regional Development Alliance Board learned in a meeting Thursday.

“A lot of that’s because of Enid. They purchased an additional 80 acres and are looking to expand into that area — looking at some new buildings out on 66th Street, now that that’s been approved,” ERDA Executive Director Brent Kisling said. “They have become a very big player in the United States.”

Wyoming-based Transportation Partners and Logistics operates a transloading facility for wind turbine equipment on the northeast corner of 66th and Chestnut. The company only operates in parts for turbines in Oklahoma — not building wind turbines — and transporting and storing the eight components needed to build on, said Billy Brenton, vice president of the company, said in an interview with the News & Eagle last year.

“This facility will be a busy yard for four years just based on one customer,” Brenton said. “At the height of last summer, we had 132 people out there working and of that a good portion were trucking, which means they were eating in restaurants, staying in hotels and spending money here.”

According to the company’s website, the local facility has 180 acres of outdoor storage space, as well as 120,000-square-feet of indoor storage space. It has 8,000 feet of railroad track served by BNSF Railways.

TP&L also has rail distribution facilities in Garden City, Kan.; Grand Forks, N.D.; Casper, Wyo.; and O’Neill, Neb.

In other business, the board heard an update on Spotted Cow Packaging plans. The company, which is currently located in the business incubator, does co-packing and some food preparation.

Negotiations on a building on Cottonwood did not work out, Kisling told the board.

“We’re looking at some other options here in the community,” he said. “We have a company that is in the process of building a number of buildings in our industrial park out on 54th Street. We approached them about the potential of adding one more building to their mix.”

Some bids received earlier this week had good numbers, Kisling said. There could be a final contract for consideration as early as the board’s meeting in June, he said.

ERDA discussed the project in greater detail in executive session, which is closed to the public.

Click for the latest, full-access Enid News & Eagle headlines | Text Alerts | app downloads

Miller is city reporter for the Enid News & Eagle. She can be reached at jmiller@enidnews.com.

Press Coverage | SteelGuru

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Power News – Published on Wed, 09 May 2018

Transportation Partners and Logistics announced that it owns and operates the largest wind power component distribution center in North America. With the recent expansion of its location in Garden City and additional distribution centers in North Dakota, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Nebraska, the company serves multiple industries including wind power with rail, port and trucking logistics support and management.

With more than 630 acres in its Garden City location alone, the company’s distribution centers to-date support more than 75 wind farms in North America and provide warehousing, indoor storage and logistical support for moving turbines and other wind energy generation components, ensuring they arrive to the job site on time. The company owns and operates state of the art equipment that can take wind power components from factory or port to job site.

Ms Shelli Stacey, Director of Rail Logistics and a partner at TP&L said that “TP&L has built a strong presence in wind power by providing complete logistics support for wind farms being built across all of North America, including Canada and Mexico. Our customers depend on our ability to engage quickly, with customized solutions that get the job done right and on time. We look forward to serving this community as the demand for wind power continues to grow.”

TP&L is an asset-based company, ensuring it is fully scalable within its own fleet and completed “in-house.” Customers will enjoy quick turnaround time because the company never has to lease equipment or sub-contract for additional services. TP&L is the one of the only companies that can store, deliver and maintain wind power facilities to an industry growing every day.