Siemens Wind Power fires 400
OFFSHORE: The German owned, Denmark based windmill factory Siemens Wind Power is hit by the downturn in world economy and has to make major cuts. The company is therefore sacking 400 employees from the factories in Aalborg, Brande and Engesvang in Denmark.
"We have to avoid over capacity to secure our ability to compete in production costs and as such, our long term success", says Andreas Nauen, CEO of the business unit Siemens Wind Power. It is primarily the production division which is influenced by the decisions that will affect the departments of the windmill company in Aalborg, Brande and Engesvang in Denmark.
"As we will see a temporary decrease in market demand, we expect that renewable energy sources and especially wind power will remain technologies in high growth", says Nauen.
Up until now, none of Siemens' clients have cancelled orders but some customers are postponing future wind projects, mainly because of difficulties in financing their projects.
"Our business plans were based on market conditions which now have changed", says Andreas Nauen.
"We expect that the industry continues to grow, but with a remarkably lower growth rate than anyone could have foreseen just a couple of months ago. We had planned to increase our production with almost 50 percent in 2009; instead we will now grow with a lower but still solid two digit growth rate", he says.
Based on the planned growth rates, Siemen Wind Power hired proactively new employees to ensure that they would be fully integrated in the company and trained before the expected production growth would kick in. In the financial year of 2008 alone, Siemens hired approximately 2000 new employees across the world.
"However, as a result of lower growth expectations we are now faced with the difficult task of adjusting our production plans according to the new market conditions, which unfortunately means discharges in some areas", says Andreas Nauen.
"Siemens will nevertheless remain flexible and if the demand increases faster than expected, we will be able to increase capacity in time."
Since Siemens bought Bonus Energy in the end of 2004, the number of employees in Denmark and globally has increased rapidly. In a few years the number of employees has grown with a factor seven from approximately 800 at the time of the takeover to the current 5,700 employees. The majority of the jobs are placed in Denmark.
Source: Siemens Wind Power
