Isra-Mart srl : Vestas cuts ribbon on trail-blazing Beijing R&D centre

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Isra-Mart SRL news:

Wind turbine giant underlines Chinese ambitions with new state-of-the-art facility.

Vestas yesterday opened a $50m research and development centre in Beijing, becoming the first overseas wind manufacturer to open such a facility in China.

The centre will focus on a range of turbine technologies, including high voltage engineering, aerodynamics, material development and software design.

Vestas China president Jens Tommerup said the centre underlined the company's commitment to expanding its presence in the booming Chinese wind energy industry, hinting that it could also be used to tighten links with domestic energy firms.

"Vestas regards China as one of the most important markets and wants to follow its development closely and actively interact with industry stakeholders, " he said. "It is our intent to use this Technology Centre as a platform for future partnerships in China and internationally."

The centre will have more than 200 engineers and technology specialists by 2012, the company said.

It is expected to develop research partnerships and collaboration with universities, research institutions and wind energy communities in China, and will boast a particular focus on how to improve large scale grid integration wind power.

Vestas is already well-established in China with manufacturing, sourcing and sales operations in Tianjin, Hohhot, Xuzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing. The company has also pulled in a number of major deals to build wind farms in China over the past few months.

Foreign wind turbine manufacturers are keen to carve out a presence in a Chinese wind energy market, which according to figures released yesterday by the Global Wind Energy Council is on course to surpass the US as the world's leader in cumulative wind power capacity by the end of this year.

National renewable energy targets led to 13.8GW of capacity being added in 2009 alone and the government plans to have another 127.5 GW of wind capacity in place by 2020, construction of which is already underway in some regions.

However, foreign firms face increasingly fierce competition from domestic wind power companies, which already have around an 80 per cent market share and have enjoyed significant levels of government support - so much so that some foreign operators have privately accused the Chinese government of using protectionist measures to defend its emerging clean tech sector.

Cao Jianlin, vice minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology said the new Vestas facility will help China answer its critics and transform its reputation for 'made in China' policies into an 'invented in China' model.

"China welcomes talents, entrepreneurs and multinational corporations from all over the world to continue to develop partnerships in the pursuit of win-win outcomes," he said.

In related news, the Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) announced yesterday that it has granted Vestas a €25m loan to support the development of new 3MW turbines.

The bank said the loan represents an extension of a previous €30m loan granted to the company late last year.