Vestas Wind Systems A/S (CPH: VWS) will open a factory in Poland to produce the blades for its massive new offshore wind turbines, a key step as the company works to deliver orders that will return it to profitability.
Europe’s largest wind turbine maker plans to make the 116-meter (377-foot) blades — taller than than Statue of Liberty — in Szczecin, a city in northwest Poland on a waterway that feeds into the Baltic Sea. The location will give the company easy access to supply wind farms off the coast of Poland as well as the Baltic region and other European seas.
“The supply chain we’re building now is a strong foothold for offshore in Europe,” said Tommy Rahbek Nielsen, Vestas’s chief operating officer. “If the market grows, we’ll follow the growth and add capacity as needed.”
The plans are a welcome sign for an industry that’s struggled to cope with surging inflation and costly supply chain issues. Even as some offshore wind developers strain to build projects profitably, the move from Vestas shows there’s a healthy source of future demand for new machines that are crucial to global plans to slash fossil-fuel demand.
The new turbine blades are so long that they can’t easily be transported by road nor rail and need to go straight onto ships to be delivered to customers. The Polish factory will add to the production supply from two existing factories, in Denmark and Italy, where the company will also make the blades. The Polish plant is set to start operating in 2026 and create more than 1,000 jobs, the company said.
There may be more production to come. Vestas is still considering building an additional factory in the UK, potentially in Scotland, to help serve the UK market. The company signed an agreement late last year with RWE AG to supply turbines for a series of wind farms planned off the coast of England.
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