Thursday 23 September 2010

Spanish wind turbine firm Gamesa to triple China investments

www.google.com
20 Sep 2010

MADRID -- Spain's Gamesa, one of the world's top wind turbine manufacturers, said Tuesday it would 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 (54 million dollars) on facilities in China and it plans to invest over 90 million euros between 2010-2012, bringing its total investment in the country to over 130 million euros, it said in a statement. Gamesa forecasts China will account for over 30% of total sales, compared to 15% last year. "One of Gamesa's goals is to cement its position as one of the top five players in the Chinese wind power industry", Gamesa chairman Jorge Calvet said in the statement.

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. The country, the world's most populous, nearly doubled its wind power capacity last year with the rollout of 13.7GWs 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 1,500MWs 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 1.3GWs 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. 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% 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% at 10,806.60 points.

0 comments: