Wind turbine manufacturer, Senvion India, is all set to be taken over by the Saudi Arabian conglomerate, Alfanar.

Senvion India Pvt Ltd is part of the German company Senvion GmbH, formerly known as RE Power. It was briefly owned by the Indian wind turbine company, Suzlon between 2007 and 2015.

Senvion GmbH had turned insolvent in April last year and its global assets was later taken over by Siemens Gamesa, another wind turbine major.

The Indian arm of Senvion was left out—Siemens Gamesa has large operations in India and therefore didn’t need Senvion in the country—and became an independent entity. On April 6, Senvion GmbH announced that it had entered into a “binding agreement with a strategic investor to sell and transfer its fully operational Indian entity.”

In a statement, Senvion said that the “parties have now entered in the final closure stage where legal documentations and agreements are being discussed.” It said the company expected the transaction to close before June 2020.

BusinessLine reached out to Senvion India’s CEO and Managing Director, Amit Kansal, but he said he was not in a position to disclose the name of the strategic investor at the moment.

Senvion India manufactures wind turbines of nominal capacity of 2.3 MW. In 2016, it took over the manufacturing facilities of Kenersys (of the Baba Kalyani group). The plant, located at Baramati, near Pune, has capacity to produce 250 MW a year.

Alfanar Energy, which is setting up wind power plants in India, has about 600 MW of capacity that it won through auctions under execution. The company gave 450 MW worth of orders to Siemens Gamesa and the rest to Senvion.

Industry sources tell BusinessLine that Alfanar intends to make turbines in India and ship them to Saudi Arabia for installation there.

Despite the Indian wind energy market having been rather tepid in the last two years—though, expected to pick up momentum from next year—a number of foreign companies have been setting up manufacturing units here. These include WEG of Brazil, which is building its factory at Hosur, EWT of Denmark, which has a production facility near Chennai, Nordex of Germany, which also has a unit near Chennai and Sany Heavy Energy of China, which has said it would make wind turbines from its Chakan plant near Pune where it has been producing construction equipment since 2007.

Apart from these, a number of other companies are into manufacturing of components—mainly blades and gearboxes. NGC of China is building its factory in the Sri City industrial estate near Chennai; ZF of Germany took over the gear box manufacturer, Hansen (originally Belgian, but later briefly owned by Suzlon) is looking to expand its facilities in Coimbatore.

Many of these units have an eye on the export market. India’s exports of wind plant components, including turbine components, blades and gearboxes, have jumped from nothing to half a billion dollars, last year. The industry has asked the government for 8 per cent ‘export incentive’ to ginger up exports. In a recent chat with BusinessLine , Tulsi Tanti, the Chairman and Managing Director of Suzlon and the Chairman of the Indian Wind Turbine Manufacturers Association, said that the government had accepted the request and the incentive would be announced soon.

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