World's largest wind turbine maker to scale down India operations

Vestas, the world's biggest wind turbine manufacturer, has decided to "scale down its sales efforts in the Indian market," an industry source said Wednesday. The Danish multi-national is in a difficult situation in India and in response to a query, Mikkel Friis-Thomsen, Communication Partner, Media & External Relations, Vestas Wind Systems A/S, said that the global wind energy market is in a "challenging situation right now''. As a consequence, Vestas is currently implementing a global re- organization plan to develop a "more scalable and flexible organization" and cut cost by 250 million euros by the end of 2012. Consequent to its efforts to "re-establish a more efficient and profitable business", the company is "re-evaluating its current business set-up and approach in India". Therefore, "Vestas has decided to scale down its sales efforts in the Indian market to focus on providing value-added service and maintenance to existing Indian wind power plants," Friss-Thomsen said. "Vestas will adjust the number of employees to match the reduced business scope,"he has said in an email. Vestas was one of the earliest wind turbine manufacturers to set up shop in India. It came into India in collaboration with RRB. Vestas-RRB was a well known brand in the mid-1990s and was the second highest selling turbine after NEPC Micon, which was a joint venture between NEG Micon of Denmark and the NEPC group. Vestas at present today has about 3,000 MW of standing machines. According to Ramesh Kymal, who headed Vestas for many years--he now heads Vestas' competitor, Gamesa India--the Danish company's business model was not appropriate for India, as it refused to do the "project development work"--such as buying and developing land and putting the transmission infrastructure.