Post by ferryfast admin on Oct 7, 2011 13:33:00 GMT -5
Polish shipyards: Gdansk workforce takes a tilt at windmills
By Jan Cienski
Financial Times of London
www.ft.com/cms/s/0/780857a2-e83d-11e0-9fc7-00144feab49a.html#axzz1a7dEkD1w
Something unusual is happening at the Gdansk shipyard, whose brawny welders, pipe fitters and steelworkers helped set communism on the path to destruction by founding the Solidarity labour union in 1980.
After brushes with bankruptcy, frequent changes of owners and offbeat investor ideas such as turning part of the Polish shipyard into an upmarket apartment complex, the 6.5 hectare production hall is again working.
But the sprays of sparks and piercing glow of welding torches are not just building ships, they are also being used to create masts for power-generating windmills.
This is one of the three areas of business being pushed by the yard’s new Ukrainian owners, who also control the metallurgical conglomerate the Industrial Union of the Donbass, one of Ukraine’s leading industrial groups.
The yard has the capacity to build 100 of the masts a year. When a new addition to the factory comes online, the yard will be able to build 300 a year, generating about a quarter of the shipyard’s revenues.
“Today, we are one of the largest mast producers in central and eastern Europe,” says Arkadiusz Aszyk, a member of the board at the shipyard.
“All of our analysis tells us that this is a very good market. We haven’t started building the new factory yet, but we already have customers lining up to buy the production from us.”
The goal is for 50 per cent of revenues to come from building ships, and the remaining quarter to come from steel construction, such as the roof of Gdansk’s new airport, which would make the yard less dependent on the vagaries of the world shipping industry, something that had led to past bankruptcies.
The new strategy is the result of plans that were brought in by the Ukrainian owners when they bought the shipyard in 2007.
With transport charges making up about a third of the cost of a windmill mast, the shipyard’s maritime location makes it easier to ship the massive sections by sea, giving it an advantage over landlocked competitors.
The move to building sea-based generating platforms will also make it easy for the yard to ship its production to offshore locations.
Because the masts are so enormous and so costly to transport, the Gdansk shipyard will have a natural advantage over rivals who supply markets in western Europe, as Poland builds up its wind-generating capacity.
In 2005, Poland had 83MW of wind-powered generating capacity; by 2009 that had risen to 725MW; while, this year, that had already grown to 1,352MW – a steep rise but still amounting to less than 4 per cent of Poland’s total generating capacity.
The goal, part of the EU’s project of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, is to have renewables accounting for 15 per cent of Poland’s electricity output.
“This is a trend that will continue for the next few years – the 15 per cent target is not in danger,” says Wojciech Hann, energy analyst with Deloitte, the consultancy.
The future for wind looks fairly solid. Poland’s transmission monopoly has had requests to connect 15GW of wind farms to the national grid.
Of the large energy companies active in Poland, RWE, the German utility, plans to ramp up its capacity from 108MW to 300MW.
Enea, majority-owned by the Polish state, plans wind capacity of 350MW-400MW, while Tauron, the second-largest utility in Poland, plans wind farms with capacity of 440MW.
PGE, the largest generator, plans to invest 8.9bn zlotys ($2.7bn) in renewables by the end of next year.
That means that the 40 workers out of the shipyard’s 2,000 employees who build masts – and who will be joined by 200 more when the new mast plant opens – have little fear of losing their jobs, a worry that had dogged workers at the yard ever since they helped overthrow communist rule in 1989.
Walking by the 4m-high rolls of heavy steel that will make up the wind turbine towers, Aldona Dybuk, the yard’s spokeswoman, pauses to look at the enormous overhead lift clanking into action far above in the cavernous production hall.
“Finally, something is happening in the shipyard. No one talks of shutting us down – instead someone is finally investing in us,” she says.