GE’s blade manufacturing subsidiary LM Wind Power as part of a cost cutting drive plans to close two production facilities in Lunderskov, Denmark, which could affect about 200 employees.
“Current price reductions and demand projections indicate that maintaining these resources in Denmark is adding cost and causing the business to lose competitiveness,” Bjarne Sandager Nielsen, vice president operations and sourcing at LM Wind Power, said in a statement sent to Recharge.
“This is a difficult business announcement intended to position the company for success in the longer term as market conditions evolve. We need to speed up the way we introduce new technologies to market by developing prototypes alongside production in manufacturing plants.”
The likely job losses in Lunderskov come after a series of announcements by wind OEMs such as Siemens Gamesa and Enercon to reduce employees in high-cost countries like Denmark and Germany. The companies at the same time have been expanding production in countries with lower labour costs, or in countries with higher labour costs at large factories that allow for economies of scale.
LM Wind Power hasn’t mentioned labour costs as a reason for its plant closure plans in Denmark, but said current price reductions and demand projections indicate that maintaining current resources in Denmark keeps adding cost while causing the business to lose global competitiveness.
At the same time, the company is seeing a growing trend towards more prototyping in the plants where blades will be later introduced into serial production.
“To enable this, we will be moving more of the resources that are support to these prototypes, to our serial producing plants,” LM Wind said in its statement. The Danish plant, however, only had a prototyping and a mold facility.
The blade maker has a large plant in the French harbour city of Cherbourg, where serial production for its record-setting 107-metre LM 107.0P blades is being ramped up that LM Wind has developed for GE’s 12MW Haliade-X offshore wind turbine.
LM said it will start consultations with labour representatives for the potential closure of the Lunderskov production units, and simultaneously will hold talks to reorganize parts of its local engineering function in Denmark to optimize global performance.
LM Wind has 15 manufacturing facilities in nine countries.
