Vestas to sell off factories

摘要

Over the last year Vestas has been engaged in a substantial restructuring programme to cut costs and overcapacity. The staffing figures tell how far this has come. In 2010, Vestas employed around 25,000 people around the globe. Last year, chief executive Ditlev Engel said he wanted to shave this figure to around 16,000. It could come down even more. In what is described as building "flexibility" into the manufacturing process, Vestas has signalled it is looking to offload some of its factories involved in machining or producing raw materials. However, included in this list is the company's only tower factory in Pueblo, in the US state of Colorado, which recently won a multimillion-dollar supply deal from an unnamed third-party manufacturer. Speaking to Windpower Monthly, the man handling the programme, Vestas chief operating officer Jean-Marc Lechene, referred to last year's sale of its tower factory in Varde, Denmark, to Chinese firm Titan Energy as a template for future deals. As part of the deal, Vestas agreed to continue sourcing from the plant.