Alstom has signed a letter of intent with the government of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in the South of Brazil, to set up its first factory in Latin America dedicated to the production of towers for wind turbines.
The plant will be installed in Canoas beside an existing Alstom Grid facility, from which the company’s power transmission business in Brazil is overseen. The new plant, which is scheduled to start operations in the first half of 2013, will have the capacity to make 120 towers per year, which represents around 350 MW. The initial investment is 12 million euros. With an 11.000 m² footprint, the installation will employ 90 people, 80% of them local, and around 250 additional indirect jobs could be created.
“The factory has already received orders to supply the Brazilian market. For example, the towers necessary to complete the contract for the Corredor do Senandes wind complex, signed with Odebrecht Energia this year, will be manufactured in this new facility. The unit, leveraging its strategic geographic position, will also export to other Latin American countries”, says Marcos Costa, president of Alstom Brazil.
The new Canoas factory will be the second manufacturing unit for the wind power generation infrastructure business of Alstom in Latin America. In November 2011, the company opened its first wind turbine plant in Camaçari, State of Bahia, with the capacity to manufacture 600 MW of wind turbines per year.
