In 2009, about 35 percent of Gamesa's overall global sales came from Spain while it was just starting off in India. Today, there has been a complete reversal with the sales in Spain standing at nil and the India sales crossing more than 35 percent. How do you analyse this paradigm shift? What have been the key reasons for this?
If you look at Gamesa globally, you will notice that we have led the growth in developing nations such as Mexico, Brazil and India. Our presence is the strongest in the emerging economies as the opportunities to scale are abundant.
When it comes to harnessing power from natural resources, a lot is dependent on the geographical landscape of the regional. India is a tropical country with abundance of sun and wind making it one of the most conducive environments to harness renewable power.
India's wind potential, as vetted by the Lorenz-Berkeley lab in the US more than 600,000 megawatts and we have just tapped over 23,000 megawatts out of that. So this capacity coupled with the increasing number of IPPs that have emerged today and the desperate need for addressing our need for energy security, India has emerged as a favourable nation for wind.
The next big advantage India has is that our manufacturing is extremely strong and we have a certification system that has been put in place by the government, which ensures that we have the highest quality turbines which are sold in India. What we make in India are exportable. Plus we have a great advantage of technical skills which bring down the cost of the manufacturing and that gives us a distinct edge and we can be an export powerhouse if the opportunity arises.
Tell us about your overall manufacturing capabilities and capacities in India. Where do you stand in terms of capacity utilisation? Are you looking at any expansion in near future?
Since commencing our operations in India, Gamesa has invested over EUR180 million towards expanding its capabilities, skill and capacities. We started operations from a modest facility in Red Hills, near Chennai to make the G58-850 kW.
Soon we realised that this was not sufficient to meet local demands. So the next step was to invest in three units across India in 2012-First the construction of the state of the art Nacelles Assembly Factory in Mamandur, Chennai, then the Blade Manufacturing and the a joint venture tower fabrication units near Vadodara, Gujarat.
The Current facility Mamandur has a capacity of 1500 MW and can go up to 1800 MW. We foresee rapid growth in our business going forward especially with our decision to assemble the G114-2.0 MW turbines out of this unit and therefore will witness an increase in manpower across all functions.
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