Nordex SE
Nordex AG: Nordex establishing joint venture in China
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Nordex establishing joint venture in China
Production facility for large-scale turbines being set up / major order for
200 MW secured
Hamburg/Ningxia, December 2, 2005. The Nordex Group has today signed a joint
venture contract for the local production of megawatt-class wind turbines in
China. The company’s partners are the regional utility Ningxia Electric Power
Group (40%) and the Ningxia Tianjing Electric Energy Development Group (10%),
which operates power stations and is engaged in the construction sector. Both
companies are owners of the “Helanshan” wind farm, which with an installed
capacity of 110 MW is the largest Chinese project of this type and is to
undergo massive extensions over the next few years.
Under the turbine producer’s operative management, Nordex Wind Power Equipment
Manufacturing Co. Ltd. will be assembling wind turbines with a capacity of
1.5 megawatts in the province of Ningxia. The joint venture has already
received its first major order of 200 MW to be constructed until 2009. The
partners will be completing the first 26 turbines for China in the coming
year. A number of these turbines will still be produced in Germany to provide
the engineers from China with a training opportunity at main factory.
After the necessary production quality is secured local manufactur-ing content
will be raised step by step. Since the end of 2005, suppliers responding to
invitations for tenders in China must guarantee local manufacturing content of
at least 70 percent. “We want to achieve this level swiftly,” explains
Thomas Richterich, CEO at Nordex AG. This will be facilitated by further wind
farm projects being planned by the partners with a volume of up to 600 MW. If
this business volume is achieved in the medium term, the joint venture will be
able to extend the production facility to accommodate an annual output of 200
turbines.
Nordex can already look back on years of extensive experience in operating a
turbine production facility in China. In 1998 it established a joint venture
with Xi’an Aero Engine for the assembly of 600 kW turbines. In response to
greater demand in China for large-scale turbines, Nordex has realigned its
local production ac-tivities. As a result, it started up a new rotor blade
production facility in Baoding in spring 2005, where it is producing
components for the N60/1,300 kW series.
Nordex Wind Power Equipment Manufacturing has plans going beyond the project
development activities with its partners. The Chinese market potentially
offers high general growth rates for producers of wind turbines. Thus, the
Chinese government has in-vited tenders for projects entailing a total of some
3,000 MW since 2003. Contracts for roughly one third of these projects have
al-ready been awarded. As well as this, at the end of February 2005 the
Chinese People’s Congress passed a law to support the use of renewable
energies, which will be taking force on January 1, 2006. Although the tariff
for electricity produced from wind power have not been fixed, the remuneration
period is expected to come to a sufficient 30,000 full-load hours (approx. 15
years). In this way, Peking wants to increase installed capacity in China
from a current about 1,000 MW to 30,000 MW by 2020.
For more information, please contact:
Nordex AG
Ralf Peters
Telephone: +49 40 500 98 – 100, Telefax: – 333
End of announcement (c)DGAP 02.12.2005
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WKN: A0D655; ISIN: DE000A0D6554; Index:
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