Koreans triple production and jobs in the Port of Aveiro

CS Wind ASM will invest around €260 million over the next four years with the goal of tripling the production capacity of wind towers and offshore foundations at the industrial facilities occupied by the group in the port of Aveiro, ECO has learned.

This is the biggest project included in the package of 26 investment tax contracts approved Wednesday by the government, providing a maximum tax credit of €92 million, and allowing the year 2021 to close with a record €2.7 billion of foreign investment contracted by AICEP.

The group controlled since last summer by South Korean giant CS Wind, which is the world’s largest manufacturer of wind towers – it bought a 60% stake in Portugal’s ASM Industries for €46.5 million – will benefit from a tax credit of up to €16.6 million and plans to hire around 400 people by 2025.

The factory dedicated to the offshore segment currently has a production capacity of less than a hundred units per year and a total area of 72,000 square metres in the Port of Aveiro’s Logistics and Industrial Activities Zone (ZALI), located in the municipality of Ílhavo. The group also owns a factory in Sever do Vouga, which annually makes close to 200 onshore towers to be installed in onshore wind farms.

It was in this area that a private dock of 200 metres was built for CS Wind ASM, presented as the only one at national level dedicated to offshore cargo. The first ship docked here on December 26 to unload 12 components for wind towers. To assert itself as a “strategic hub for the offshore industry”, the port administration plans to increase the length of the quay to 1,000 metres.

Turnover of 100 million and leading in Europe

In total, CS Wind ASM currently has nearly 350 workers, 140 of whom are at this most recent unit in the port area. Adelino Costa Matos, who became a minority shareholder, but kept his position as executive president after the sale of its stake, foresees reaching €100 million of turnover next year, thus anticipating the goal’s achievement previously set for 2025. Directly or indirectly, it exports 99% of its production, mainly to Europe and some Latin American countries, such as Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay.

During a visit on December 10 to the metallic construction structures factory in Ílhavo, the minister of the environment and climate action said he was “convinced that one of the reasons why [CS Wind] came to Portugal has to do with the know-how that this company already had and that A. Silva Matos [parent company founded in 1980 by the historic metallurgical industrialist Adelino da Silva Matos, father of the current CEO] always had, and with its professional and market-winning capacity”.

“But I want to believe that it wasn’t just because of that. That it was also because investors look at Portugal as a leading country in this [energy] transition, which is decisively investing and will make many of these investments, and being a client of many of these towers that are made here. It gives all the stability to the investments that are made for the sustainability of Portugal and the world,” added João Pedro Matos Fernandes.

Listed on the stock exchange, CS Wind makes $1 billion a year and has a market capitalisation of $3 billion. It also has factories in China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and the US, where it bought the world’s largest factory from Denmark’s Vestas this year. When it bought ASM Industries to have an industrial base in Europe, the Koreans set themselves the goal of making it the largest European manufacturer in the sector.