Brazil: Vestas inaugurates factory

The new factory is part of Vestas’ plans to meet the increasing production demands in Brazil and Latin America, including the 376 MW of announced orders for projects in Brazil that Vestas received in 2015. In accordance with recent BNDES approval, Vestas expects to localise 70 percent of hub and nacelle manufacturing for the Brazilian market. 

Speaking at the inauguration, Rogério Zampronha, General Manager for Vestas Brazil, said “With some of the best wind resources in the world, Brazil has a huge potential for wind power and remains one of Vestas’ key strategic markets. Our investment in this factory is a key part of providing our customers a strong business case here and underlines Vestas’ competitiveness in Brazil”.

The factory will produce hubs and nacelles for the V110-2.0 MW turbine model, recently awarded the “Wind Turbine of 2015” under its category “Onshore wind turbines up to 2.9 MW”.

In addition to the factory, Vestas has agreements with Aeris to produce blades and with ABB to produce generators locally and currently maintains 13 wind farms in Brazil, including the Xangri-lá (RS) wind farm which produces electricity for the Honda car manufacturing facility located in Sumaré, São Paulo.

Vestas has been present in the Brazilian market since 2000 and has since then installed 364 wind turbines that represent a total installed capacity of 713 MW.