CNA file photo

Taipei, Aug. 27 (CNA) Taiwan's largest ship builder, CSBC Corp., Taiwan, has announced that it plans to establish three companies specializing in maritime engineering, underwater infrastructure construction and wind turbine working vessels by early next year, with an eye on the growing business opportunities available in the emerging local offshore wind energy industry.

CSBC executive vice president Lin Foung-tang (林福堂) told CNA Sunday that in addition to those planned businesses, CSBC will also seek to establish five professional teams to build and maintain offshore wind farms in conjunction with local companies.

These are part of CSBC's preparations for an ambitious plan to become an offshore wind energy and ocean energy turnkey provider, after forging cooperative links with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) in March and the Hai Long Offshore Wind Farm Project Office on Aug. 23, said Lin.

With the planned companies and teams, CSBC is looking to deepen its technology in the maritime engineering industry and build a complete supply chain for the offshore wind power generating industry, Lin noted.

He explained that CSBC's active role in the offshore wind energy development sector has been inspired by the government's green energy policy and potentially massive business opportunities in the emerging sector.

Given the challenge of installing wind turbines for use at sea and the fact that CSBC has secured orders to build several hundred wind turbines off Taiwan's western coast, the enterprise decided to first construct a 150-meter-long wind turbine installation ship at a cost of NT$5 billion (US$166 million) and two platform vessels costing NT$600 million, Lin revealed.

According to CSBC, the offshore wind power industry is developing rapidly in Taiwan thanks to the government's wind energy policy, which aims to construct offshore wind farms able to generate 520 megawatts of electricity by 2020 and three gigawatts by 2025.

Hai Long Offshore Wind Farm Project Office is a joint venture formed by Canada-based Northern Power Development Co. and Singapore-based Yushan Energy Co. in 2015 to facilitate the deployment of more than 100 wind turbines at two Taiwan offshore sites.

(By Wei Shu and Elizabeth Hsu)
Enditem/AW