A Chinese partner “certainly wouldn’t be the worst solution” for Senvion, its chief executive Jürgen Geissinger said in an interview commenting on market rumours of a possible Chinese buyer for the Germany-based wind OEM.

“China is the biggest wind market [in the world]. But we are working on being able to continue to exist independently by achieving the utmost in efficiency,” Geissinger told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS) in an interview.

Senvion’s current majority owner, US private equity fund Centerbridge Partners, is slated to sell the wind OEM after four to seven years of ownership, Geissinger confirmed.

Centerbridge acquired Senvion in 2015 from Indian turbine maker Suzlon.

The investment fund since then has given assurances to Senvion over major investments in R&D. The OEM confirmed that it is working on a 10MW-plus offshore wind turbine, a development that could be interesting both for the more mature European and for the fledgling Asian offshore wind market.

Geissinger in the interview with FAS praised the advantage of offshore wind over onshore due to its scale.

“The rotor blade diameters of the new machines at sea will exceed 200 metres, those are giant rotors,” he said.

The largest offshore turbine currently on the market, MHI Vestas’s V164-9.5MW, for example, only comes with a 164-metre rotor diameter.

Senvion earlier this month announced that it had signed a framework contract for the delivery of generators with China’s CRRC Zhuzhou Electric, a unit of the CRRC Group.

While the deal with the Chinese supplier in great part aims at pushing down the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) of Senvion turbines, it may also open the door for additional Chinese involvement.

Earlier this year, Senvion signed a multi-year contract to buy blades from two manufacturing lines in China of US blade maker TPI Composites as part of the OEM’s plans to boost sales in Asia, Australia and South America.

Geissinger also defended the closure of three out of Senvion’s four German production facilities, saying the smaller plants didn’t operate economically.

“Without those measures we would not have succeeded to keep these industries here,” he told the newspaper.

“Only those businesses that manage to bring down costs the fastest will survive” he said.