Danish wind giant Vestas has finalised a multi-year supply agreement with blade maker LM Wind Power – owned by rival GE Renewable Energy – focused on the onshore Brazilian market with the flexibility for export.

Under the deal, LM Wind Power will deliver blades for Vestas’s V150-4.2MW turbine from its factory in Ipojuca in the state of Pernambuco.

“This partnership is a good example of how we develop and expand the wind energy supply chain to drive the needed scale of renewables by increasing the use of standardised components and shared manufacturing operations between OEMs, thereby adopting a similar approach to the automotive industry,” said Vestas chief operating officer Tommy Rahbek Nielsen.

“We have chosen to work with LM Wind Power because of their proven and extensive design and engineering capabilities as well as their proven global footprint.”

When GE took over LM Wind Power in 2017 in a $1.65bn acquisition, the US industrial giant said LM Wind would be ‘independent’ in a sense that it could also continue to serve third-party clients and not just GE, but the deal now closed with Vestas seems to be the largest in that respect.

Production for Vestas is scheduled to start in the second half of this year already, providing additional local jobs and also spurring indirect investments in the Brazilian supply chain, Vestas said.

“Now more than ever, collaboration throughout the value chain is crucial for the wind industry to sustain a healthy growth and deliver on what an electrified and net-zero world needs from us,” said Dorte Kamper, vice president of sales at LM Wind Power.

“In LM Wind Power, it is in our DNA to collaborate and to adapt our building blocks to be a strong partner for our customers. We look forward to leverage our engineering and manufacturing capabilities and deliver high quality blades for Vestas.”

Vestas added that sharing manufacturing operations across the renewables industry ensures sites are not sitting idle and creates a flexible and cost-effective supply chain that enables industrial scale to meet global net-zero ambitions.

The cooperation deal with LM Wind comes after Vestas in March had announced it is planning to cut 275 jobs in Denmark as it navigates a “highly volatile business environment”, with 45 of those workers cut at its Lem blade development plant.