A contract was signed in Yinchuan, capital of northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, for launching a joint venture between the Nordex Group of Germany and two local companies of Ningxia producing megawatt-class wind turbines in China.

In accordance with the contract signed Friday, the German investor will bear 50 percent of the stake on the projected joint venture, while the two Chinese partners, Ningxia Electric Power Group and the Ningxia Tianjing Electric Energy Development Group, will shoulder 40 percent and 10 percent of the total investment, respectively.

With a total investment of 12 million US dollars, the new joint venture will be located inside the economic and technological development zone of Yinchuan City.

Nordex Wind Power Equipment Manufacturing Co. Ltd. will be assembling wind turbines with a capacity of 1.5 megawatts in Ningxia. In the beginning, the joint venture will be able to produce 200 turbines annually and the annual sales will total 1.8 billion yuan (about 222 million US dollars). It 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.

The first batch of wind turbines will be ready for delivery in the fourth quarter next year.

After the necessary production quality is secured local manufacturing 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, he said.

Nordex established a joint venture with Xi'an Aero Engine for the assembly of 600 kW turbines in 1998. In response to greater demand in China for large-scale turbines, Nordex has realigned its local production activities. 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.

Source: Xinhua