Spanish Wind Turbine Maker Triples Its Investment in China

Spain’s Gamesa, one of the world’s top wind turbine manufacturers, says it will triple its total investment in China by 2012 to meet rising demand for clean energy there. China wants renewable energy like wind to meet 15% of its energy needs by 2020, double its share in 2005, as it seeks to rein in emissions that have made its cities among the smoggiest on Earth.

Report in Sydney Morning Herald (15 September 2010):

Spain’s Gamesa, one of the world’s top wind turbine manufacturers, says it will triple its total investment in China by 2012 to meet rising demand for clean energy there.

The company has so far invested a total of 42 million euros ($A57.84 million) on facilities in China and it plans to invest over 90 million euros ($A123.95 million) between 2010-2012, bringing its total investment in the country to over 130 million euros ($A179.04 million), it said in a statement on Tuesday.

Gamesa forecasts China will account for over 30 per cent of total sales, compared to 15 per cent last year.

“One of Gamesa’s goals is to cement its position as one of the top five players in the Chinese wind energy industry,” Gamesa chairman Jorge Calvet said in the statement.

China wants renewable energy like wind to meet 15 per cent of its energy needs by 2020, double its share in 2005, as it seeks to rein in emissions that have made its cities among the smoggiest on Earth.

The country, the world’s most populous, nearly doubled its wind energy capacity last year with the rollout of 13.7 Gigawatts of wind assets, making it the largest wind power market in the world, according to Gamesa.

The company said it had broken ground on its sixth manufacturing centre in China, a factory in the province of Inner Mongolia, one of the country’s leading hubs for wind power development.

It has another factory under development in Jilin province in northwest China and four manufacturing centres in the province of Tianjin, which is home to the company’s largest manufacturing base outside of Spain.

When the factories in Jilin and Inner Mongolia come online, Gamesa will have a production capacity in China of 1,500 megawatts per year.

Gamesa also said it had recently agreed to supply two of China’s largest power companies, Guangdong Nuclear Wind and Datang Renewable Power, with 1.3 Gigawatts of turbines through 2013.

The company did not disclose how much the contracts with the two Chinese firms were worth but French investment bank Societe Generale put the figures at 1.3 billion euros ($A1.79 billion) .

Gamesa has 30 manufacturing facilities in Europe, the United States, China and India and an international workforce of more than 6,300 people.

Shares in Gamesa closed up 9.6 per cent at 5.70 euros, its biggest one-day gain in over a year, on a day which saw the benchmark Ibex-35 index of most traded shares close up 0.38 per cent at 10,806.60 points.

Source: www.smh.com.au