Senvion prepares to weather storm

Senvion has mapped a future based on continued expansion into new markets, product innovations and a “step change” in offshore wind.

The company said its so-called Move Forward programme is already producing results as it reported full-year 2016 pre-tax loss of €89.5m, compared with a loss of €127m in 2015.

Revenue was €2.2bn, up from €1.56bn, with a firm order intake totalling €1.3bn.

Senvion said its forward strategy would result in a “lean organisation with fixed-cost improvements”.

“Key levers” include production footprint optimisation, “nearshoring”, “right-sizing” certain departments, offshoring some non-core R&D functions and streamlining R&D.

Senvion said 2016 including market entry into Scandinavia, Chile and Serbia. It said it has a “future-focused” product pipeline and expects to “improve” the portfolio further.

“Senvion expects near pricing pressure with wind growth in current markets softening and growth in new markets improving from a low base,” it said.

“In 2016, Senvion has been preparing the base to address these market trends and appropriate action plans have been identified and are already partly implemented as announced earlier.”

Senvion expects a softening of revenues in 2017 to around €2bn and predicted a return to “profitable, capital-efficient and international growth” by 2019.

Chief executive Jurgen Geissinger said: “For the future, we will keep penetrating new segments in our core markets and enter new markets, all based on a product philosophy which aims to reduce levelised cost of energy by 4% to 6% every year, whilst working on improving our organizational efficiency. 

Senvion announced earlier this week it was cutting more than 700 jobs at factories in Germany.

Image: Senvion