Siemens (NYSE: SI) announced that it has selected Tillsonburg, Ontario, for its Canadian wind turbine blade manufacturing site.
The blade factory will be established in an existing 253,000-square-foot facility, located on 40 acres, that was originally opened in 1975. It’s the company’s first manufacturing plant for wind turbine components in Canada and represents an investment in excess of C$20 million. The manufacturing, service operations and associated back-office activities are expected to create up to 300 wind jobs. An additional 600 related jobs for the construction and commissioning is expected to be created during the build-out of the wind farms under agreement with Samsung (005930.KS) and Pattern.
The factory is expected to produce all of the wind turbine blades for Siemens projects in the province. Renovations to the Tillsonburg facility will begin later this month with the facility expected to be production ready in October 2011. The blades manufactured at the new facility will be for Siemens’ 2.3-MW wind turbines.
Siemens has approximately 5,000 employees in Canada. Sales for Siemens in Canada for fiscal 2010 (ended September 30), were C$2.3 billion.
Siemens To Provide Financing To Wind Turbine Customers
Siemens has gained approval to open its own bank that will provide $1 billion to $2 billion in financing to wind turbine customers, according to a TheStreet.com.
Siemens is strong financially, but the lack of financing for project developers could drag down the demand for the company’s wind turbines and other renewable energy hardware. So, the company is stepping up to fill the funding gap, with an initial focus on German customers.
The funding could be especially useful to smaller developers lacking big-bank relations, and to offshore wind developers in search of construction-stage finance, the story states.
The new Siemens bank will help attract customers much the same as GE Financial Services does for competitor GE (NYSE: GE). By offering more attractive loan ranks than big banks, or perhaps even guaranteeing bank loans, Siemens should be able to grow its customer base.
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