MHI Vestas Offshore Wind and Taiwan's CS Wind/Chin Fong signed a conditional contract on Tuesday for the local manufacture of wind turbine towers in Taichung Harbor, according to a statement by the joint venture between Danish Vestas and Japanese Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
"The tower agreement between MHI Vestas and the CS Wind/Chin Fong partnership, which will secure local production of offshore wind turbine towers, is a significant step forward for MHI Vestas as it advances localization efforts ahead of its first projects in Taiwan," the press release read. Knud Bjarne Hansen, co-CEO of CS Wind and former president of Vestas Towers, described the agreement as a "valuable opportunity to capture a leading market position in the Taiwan offshore market".
"It is our great pleasure to be able to cooperate with Chin Fong and make use of their excellent facility within the Taichung Harbor to be the tower manufacturing facility going forward – Chin Fong has the local knowledge and CS Wind has the global towers manufacturing knowledge – an ideal combination in the support of the Taiwanese offshore wind power market," he said.
In addition to the conditional tower contract, MHI Vestas has already signed memoranda of understanding with local suppliers for the manufacturing of blades, generator products, and a range of blade materials, according to the statement. To date, the company has been named by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) and China Steel Corporation (CSC) as a preferred wind turbine supplier for 900 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind projects and has declared that its 9 MW turbine platform will be typhoon ready in 2020, in time for all offshore wind projects in the market.
"CIP first signed an award agreement with MHI Vestas back in March, and yesterday [Monday] we signed an additional localization agreement providing substantial financial backup to support the accelerated tower localization by MHI Vestas," said Jesper Krarup Holst, CEO of CI Wind Power Development Taiwan.
"This is Taiwan’s first turbine localization agreement, and it ensures that our 2021 tower localization will be realized in Taiwan with such a well-respected, local company as Chin Fong, in collaboration with CS Wind," he added. The new legal entity, MHI Vestas Offshore Wind Taiwan, Ltd., will be co-located with MHI in Taipei City.
