A Second Look at Nabrawind's EIC Accelerator Self-Erecting Towers

The European Commission's list of June 2019 winners names the company "NabraTech". Its legal name is Nabrawind Technologies SL, a Pamplona firm whose products carry the Nabrawind brand and whose website, nabrawind.com, is the one the list gives. NBTECH, the name of the funded project, is also the shorthand the company uses for itself: its 2018 tower test was run by the "head of NBTECH Tower Program", according to Windpower Engineering, and the project's own CORDIS report uses "NBTECH" and "Nabrawind" for the same company. The EC winner list gives the project one row, with no partner company.

The EU selected the project in the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 cut-off of 5 June 2019, the Horizon 2020 forerunner of today's EIC Accelerator, and signed a grant-only agreement on 14 November 2019. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €1,675,537.50 towards a total cost of €2,393,625, for a project that ran from 1 December 2019 to 31 July 2023. The money was to prove two products in a real wind farm: Nabralift, a steel tower that lifts itself with hydraulic jacks instead of giant cranes, and Nabrajoint, a joint that lets a long rotor blade travel in pieces and be bolted together on site.

Owned by an Australian Miner

Nabrawind is active, and since 2025 it has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Fortescue, the Australian iron ore group. On 25 September 2025 Fortescue said it "has acquired 100 per cent of Nabrawind, consolidating its previous minority stake to take full ownership", and that it would use the 188-metre tower in large wind projects in the Pilbara. Windtech International and Energías Renovables reported the completed deal on 2 October 2025; the latter lists Sodena, Evoluwind, Barinaga y Alberdi, InnoEnergy and Basarro as the earlier shareholders. No price was disclosed.

The sources differ on the dates. Noticias de Navarra wrote in June 2026 that Fortescue took a 30% stake in 2023 and 100% in August 2025. The April 2023 announcement, carried by Invest in Navarra, describes financing that "could be convertible into a minority stake", and in June 2024 RenewEconomy and Capital Riesgo reported a second investment that combined a capital increase with a partial share purchase. The register shows that step: share capital rose by €1,054,481 to €5,445,741, entered on 3 October 2024, and Fortescue's Dutch holding company was registered as sole shareholder on 16 December 2025, according to the register summaries of Empresia and Infonif. The board was replaced the same day by two joint administrators, Paul William Judge and Christine Anne Nicolau.

For Navarra's public investor the sale was a win. Sodena, which had backed the company since 2016, said it recovered "three times the capital invested", according to Capital Riesgo. In June 2026 the company was preparing to move its Pamplona staff to the seventh floor of the former Caja Navarra headquarters on the same avenue and aimed to reach 150 employees by the end of 2026, Noticias de Navarra reported.

The Technology: Towers That Climb Out of the Ground

Taller towers reach steadier wind, and longer blades sweep more of it, which lowers the cost of each megawatt-hour. Above about 120 metres, though, conventional towers need some of the largest cranes in the world, and blades longer than 60 metres become hard to move by road, the CORDIS objective says. Nabralift answers the first problem with a three-legged steel lattice section under a standard tubular tower. Hydraulic jacks on the ground push the structure up and slide new modules in from below, so the tower, nacelle included, rises without a large crane. Nabrajoint answers the second: it joins two or more blade segments that travel separately, which the company said would allow blades over 75 metres.

The company tested the tower before the EIC grant. In January 2018 it began erecting a 160-metre prototype at Eslava in Navarra, an 86-metre lattice base topped by a 71-metre tubular section, with Spanish FEDER funding and the CENER research centre, according to Windpower Engineering and Energías Renovables. The company claimed savings of 15 to 20% against conventional towers at the time; in 2025 it claimed tower, foundation, logistics and installation together cost "between 15 to 30 per cent less", according to RenewEconomy. No independent cost comparison could be found.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The plan was concrete: validate both products "in real working conditions" on a 164-metre tower to be built in Navarra, with Acciona as promoter and a 4.5 MW Nordex turbine, and then introduce them in Europe, the United States and China, according to CORDIS. In October 2020 Navarra opened public consultation on Acciona's La Senda wind farm, two Nordex turbines on 200-metre Nabrawind lattice towers with a budget of €13,358,000, which the regional press presented as the planned tallest onshore wind turbines in the world, according to Energías Renovables and Xataka. No report that La Senda was built could be found.

The final periodic report, for January 2022 to July 2023, records two results. Nabrajoint was "considered fully validated according to the industry requirements for the release of a new blade model to the market", and external bodies confirmed that Nabralift complies with IEC 61400-1:2019, so "this technology can be now commercialized and installed". It also records what did not happen: "At the beginning of 2022, the project was temporarily paused due to significant delays in obtaining regulatory permits, as well as in the commercial agreements associated with the Nabralift demonstrator", and the company expected the project "will finally conclude by mid-2026". That is almost three years after the end date CORDIS lists. No announcement of the Navarra demonstrator's completion could be found.

1. Validate the Nabrajoint blade jointDeliveredReported fully validated in the CORDIS report; a commercial modular blade was being developed for an undisclosed turbine maker in 2020, per Windtech International.
2. Certify Nabralift for saleDeliveredIEC 61400-1:2019 compliance per CORDIS; DNV design statement for the 140 to 190 m Nabralift 2.0 family, per Energías Renovables, October 2021.
3. 164 m demonstrator in Navarra with Acciona and NordexNot achievedPaused in early 2022 over permits and commercial terms; no completion announced.
4. Finish by July 2023MissedThe company's own report moved completion to mid-2026.
5. Enter Europe, US and ChinaPartlyTower in Morocco in 2022 and a prototype in China in 2025; the company names the US and Mexico among markets, but no US tower project could be identified.

It was not the company's first EU grant. CORDIS lists a €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 feasibility study, SE-NBW, from October 2015 to March 2016, under the name Nabrawind SL at a different Pamplona address. Its report concluded that the self-erecting system would be sold together with a hybrid lattice tower for low-wind sites at hub heights of 120 metres and more, which is what Nabralift became. Whether Nabrawind SL and Nabrawind Technologies SL, incorporated a month after that grant was signed, are the same legal person could not be verified. CORDIS lists no other EU project for either name.

What Happened Outside the Project

While the Navarra demonstrator stalled, the tower found buyers elsewhere. In June 2019, three weeks after the EIC cut-off, the company announced its first sale, a 144-metre tower in Morocco, according to Energías Renovables. It was installed for the French developer InnoVent at Oualidia, with the turbine raised in February 2022, the same outlet reported; the foundation used 80 cubic metres of concrete and 10 tonnes of steel. In January 2024 the company said it held 43 granted patents in nine countries and exported all its production, according to Energías Renovables.

The larger projects came with Fortescue. A 188-metre Nabralift 3.MAX tower carrying a 7.8 MW Envision turbine was installed as a prototype in 2025 at Envision's test site in Sheyang, China, and in September 2026 UL Solutions issued a type certificate for the combination, according to Energías Renovables. The same report says 17 turbines have been supplied for Fortescue's 133 MW Nullagine wind farm in Western Australia, and RenewEconomy reports 17 Nabrawind towers for that project. In Namibia the company used its Skylift system to install Goldwind 6 MW turbines without large cranes at InnoVent's Diaz wind farm, seven of which are planned, according to ESD News in May 2026. The largest customer is now the owner, so these orders say less about outside demand than they would for an independent supplier.

Revenue and Staff: The Numbers Do Not Agree

Nabrawind's filed accounts are not free to read. The register summary on Empresia puts annual revenue above €2.5 million and staff at 41, with 2024 as the latest filed year, and names Deloitte as auditor. At its tenth anniversary in October 2025 the company said it expected revenue above €20 million for 2025 and had 68 direct staff plus about 20 regular collaborators, up from 7 people in 2015, according to Ocean News. Sodena put the headcount at 53 when it sold, up from 12 when it invested, according to Capital Riesgo. Noticias de Navarra wrote that the workforce grew tenfold in the last financial year, which none of the other figures supports. The €20 million revenue figure is a company forecast and could not be checked against filed accounts.

Why It Matters for Europe

The EU's Wind Power Action Plan of October 2023 expects installed wind capacity to grow from 204 GW in 2022 to more than 500 GW in 2030 and names slow permitting and international competition among the sector's problems. Taller towers that need no scarce heavy cranes fit that goal, especially for low-wind inland sites. Nabrawind's own record also shows the permitting problem: its EIC demonstrator was stopped by permits in Navarra, while its first commercial towers went up in Morocco, Namibia and China. The technology was developed in Pamplona with EU, Spanish and Navarra public money, and is now owned by a group whose first priority is decarbonising mines in Australia. Fortescue said it is building "a global R&D and production network" that includes Nabrawind in Spain, and the company plans to grow to 150 staff in Pamplona, so the engineering base has stayed in Europe so far.

The Verdict

Nabrawind, Fortescue and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout.