Japan's Hitachi quits wind turbine production

It blamed a small domestic market and strong competition overseas.

A few days after it decided decided to scrap the £16bn (€18bn) Wylfa Newydd nuclear power plant project in Anglesey (United Kingdom) due to economic reasons, the Japanese conglomerate Hitachi has announced that it will withdraw from wind turbine production in the face of a small domestic market and strong competition overseas. Instead, it will continue to procure turbines from its German partner and supplier Enercon and only focus on maintenance services to existing facilities.

The company also lowered the sales target of its renewable energy business involving solar and wind power for fiscal 2021 through March 2022 to JPY100bn (US$910m) from the previous yearly objective of JPY400bn (US$3.6bn).

This move is part of the company's reshuffle of overall energy business to shift focus from nuclear and wind power plants to the higher-growth market for electricity networks. In December 2018, it agreed to purchase the power grid business of Swiss engineering group ABB for US$6.4bn in a bid to boost its competitiveness in the power transmission business against competitors such as General Electric and Siemens.

This article was originally published by Enerdata.