Dundee in running for 800 jobs as wind turbine giant plans base

Gamesa, which today opens its offshore wind technology centre in Glasgow, will make a decision next month and could double the jobs figure by offering work for local companies to supply the new base.

Jorge Calvet, chief executive and chairman, said he wanted to have the facility up and running by the second half of next year so that it could produce its first turbines by 2013.

After addressing the Scottish Low-Carbon Investment Conference in Edinburgh yesterday, Calvet told The Scotsman: “We are still in the process to identify where to put the manufacturing site.

“I believe the offshore wind industry will develop very quickly. Wherever we set up ourselves our aim is to look for local suppliers and help them to develop so they supply us.

“We did that in China, where our new facility has about 140 local suppliers. We’ve done the same in India, Brazil and the United States. We will also work with our suppliers in Spain to bring them closer to our factories so that could also lead to jobs being created.”

Gamesa – in which ScottishPower-parent Iberdrola holds a stake – already has 40 staff in Glasgow, a mixture of Spanish staff and workers recruited locally. Calvet expects the headcount to rise to 80 by the end of the year and then 180 by the time the site is fully-operational.

Gamesa received a £1.5 million selective assistance (RSA) grant from the Scottish Government to help bring the technology centre to Glasgow.

Calvet added that First Minister Alex Salmond had been “very persuasive” in trying to win the turbine factory for Dundee.

He said the £150m technology centre and manufacturing facility was already fully-funded and so wouldn’t be affected by the eurozone debt crisis. The company refinanced its €1.2 billion (£1bn) overdraft with a syndicate of banks at a lower interest rate earlier this year.

But in July Gamesa and Iberdrola unwound a “strategic alliance” to develop wind farms, blaming the “global economic downturn”.