Gaia Wind A/S under new ownership

On Monday 16 October 2006, a group of investors took over the Danish manufacturer of small wind turbines ‘Gaia Wind A/S’. The investors are committed to further improving the company’s product and in driving forward the international expansion of the company.

The base version of the 11 kW Gaia-Wind turbine was developed 10 years ago, in keeping with the ‘Danish design’ - well known as the design basis for large wind turbines. Since then, some 150 Gaia-Wind turbines have been erected, most of them in Denmark.

Over the years the performance of these turbines has been logged in a public database, showing a consistent high electricity output and low downtime of Gaia-Wind turbines.

The high output is driven by the large rotor diameter of 13 metres, which makes it some 50% larger than is usual for this class of machine. It is eight years since the Gaia-Wind turbine received Danish HB-Standard’s approval, making it the only small wind turbine to be given this.

In addition, the low rotational speed means that strict Danish planning regulations regarding noise production of machines are met with ease.

Mita-Teknik A/S, the leading supplier of controls for large wind turbines, has owned Gaia Wind A/S for the past 6 years and during this period has stamped its professionalism on the organisation.

As expected with Mita-Teknik’s background, it has brought the control of the Gaia-Wind turbine to the highest standards - as found in large wind turbines. This allows, on top of advanced safety systems, the Gaia-Wind turbines to be monitored over the internet.

The leading investor and Managing Director of the new Gaia-Wind is Johnnie Andringa. With a background in large wind turbine design, Mr Andringa founded Mecal BV in his native Netherlands and spent 12 years as Managing Director of the company.

More recently, he gained experience in the management of a small wind turbine company operating in the fast-growing United Kingdom market.

Holger Anderson, Managing Director of Mita-Teknik A/S, comments: “We are proud of the design of the Gaia-Wind turbine and are very pleased that this new ownership will allow the company to move forward in the way the customers deserve and the market requires.”

“Furthermore, we are pleased to announce that although we will lose ownership, we will remain as a partner in the future development of the control system for Gaia-Wind turbines.”

Johnnie Andringa added: “I am very excited to be part of this new and promising venture. In the short-term, we will work hard on servicing our existing customers and expanding our business in Denmark through the company Gaia-Wind A/S in Århus. At the same time, we will start supplying Gaia-Wind turbines to customers in the United Kingdom through Gaia-Wind Ltd in Glasgow.”

“Over the next few years, we intend to make the company the leading supplier of competitively priced high performance small wind-turbines.”