by WTC » Sun Jun 13, 2010 3:40 pm
From todays Sunday Herald:
Steven Vass
The wind tower factory at the foot of the Kintyre peninsula is poised to attract up to 80 high-end research jobs as its Danish owner plots the next phase of its renewables expansion.
Welcon Towers, part of the Aarhus-headquartered Skykon group, which rescued 100 jobs at the plant last year when it bought out fellow Danish outfit Vestas, is now processing orders amounting to £75 million. It aims to set up a research and services base that would very likely go to its plant at Machrihanish by Campbeltown.
Niels Brix, vice-president of Skykon, said that the facility would develop next-generation designs and processes, as well as helping customers to source other parts beyond the towers that are made at Machrihanish.
Although he would not be drawn on how many posts would be involved in the new facility, which would work in tandem with Skykon’s existing research base in Denmark, it is understood that it would be between 50 and 80. There are already a handful of people working on these tasks at Machrihanish. “I can envisage that the UK is the largest market right now and would be an interesting place geographically to ramp up that kind of facility,” he said.
the bigger picture is that we are getting skilled people and very dedicated locals onboard. Niels Brix
“[The Machrihanish plant] has a need for it and could accommodate it. On the other hand, we won’t ramp it up tomorrow.”
He said that the company would take a decision on the facility “within two years”, by which time it aims to have finished upgrading the Scottish plant and port infrastructure and to have increased manufacturing jobs from the current 110 to more than 300.
Brix was speaking in Scotland during a trip to Kintyre, where the company has now spent millions of pounds upgrading the factory, including putting up a new building, to be able to cope with offshore wind towers and not just the smaller onshore output.
“We have nearly finished the first facility. We installed heavy rolling equipment, welding equipment and have initiated a new painting facility,” he said.
“We still require more welding equipment and need to erect one more building on the site.”
He added that the plant was running at full capacity, turning out more than 300 towers a year for Vestas, Siemens and Spanish group Gamesa, among others. Production is running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the grey towers are being shipped from the local harbour to UK onshore and offshore sites, including the Clyde Wind Farm near Glasgow. The plant is also temporarily supplying places as far afield as Canada and Romania to fulfil a supply agreement with Vestas as part of the handover.
Brix did concede that the company was finding it challenging to attract enough workers to the area, with remoteness and quality of housing among the sticking points.
“It can be a little harder to recruit,” he said. “But the bigger picture is that we are getting skilled people and very dedicated locals onboard. I’m not going to discuss what kinds of jobs have been the most difficult.”
He reiterated previous comments reported in these pages that the company was also considering setting up one more site on the east side of the UK, which is tipped to be in Scotland too. With Skykon in the business of making offshore wind foundations and components as well as towers, he said that it was eyeing sites for a possible UK expansion in towers or foundations. He stressed, however, that the main focus was on “ramping up” Machrihanish.
While Scotland’s authorities are feeling the pressure to ensure that some of the expected boom in renewables jobs reaches north of the border, the Skykon deal was a coup when it first emerged in December 2008. It is currently the only company making wind towers in the UK, many of which are still supplied from Germany and the Netherlands.
The total deal was worth £45m, with almost £10m supplied from public development agencies Scottish Development International and Highlands and Islands Enterprise.
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