The Nordex Group saw a surge in third quarter 2019 wind turbine orders, driven by the US and Eruope.

Customers ordered 436 turbines, with a total output of 1.7GW for projects in 14 countries.

That is up from 974MW in the same quarter a year ago.

“We continue to see strong demand for our wind turbine systems in Europe and overseas, with the new Delta4000 series recording particularly great interest,” chief sales officer Patxi Landa said.

Europe accounted for 60% of orders from July to September, the USA for 28% and Latin America for 12%. At 49%, the Delta4000 platform of 4 and 5MW machines made up almost half of the order volume in the third quarter.

During the first nine months of 2019, the overall order intake – excluding the services business – jumped to 4.7GW, up from 3.1GW in the same period of 2018.

The order surge comes as Nordex is fighting to make a profit again, after half-year consolidated net losses widened to €55.4m, compared to a consolidated net loss of €41.7m in the first half of 2018.

To help Nordex bridge the time until getting out of the red and “protect its investment”, its major shareholder, Spanish infrastructure group Acciona, as part of a capital increase last week pledged to raise its stake in the manufacturer to 36.3%, from just below 30%.

Surpassing the 30%-threshold, due to stock market rules forced Acciona to make a take-over bid for the entire company, although the Spanish firm is not believed to really want to buy Nordex.