Thirty-five out of 104.
That is how many towers on Hans Bruins’ second Egyptian wind farm were made in Egypt, produced by NSF to Goldwind’s specification. On the first project, built with Siemens Gamesa, only parts of the towers came from local steel.
Two farms, and the country went from pieces of a tower to a third of them.
Bruins runs Ras Ghareb Wind Energy and Red Sea Wind Energy. Eight years in Egypt, three utility-scale wind farms. He gave EnterpriseAM the sequence in February this year: “You first start with assembling components, and once you’re good at that, then you can start to manufacture them locally.” Towers go first because a tower is mostly empty. In his words, “you’re basically transporting a lot of air.”
I would hold that 35 next to every turbine-factory memorandum signed in this region. Announcements arrive in gigawatts. Localisation arrives in towers.
The number that stayed with me is a different one. On project one, customs clearance “sometimes ran into weeks, even months.” On project two it dropped to four or five days. Bruins credits the Finance Ministry’s digitalisation. For components Bruins describes as costing “an awful amount of money per day” when customs holds them, four days against four weeks moves a construction schedule further than a memorandum does.
EnterpriseAM asked in its headline whether Egypt is building a wind industry or hosting one. Two projects answer building, slowly, from the heaviest component up. The 2 GW-a-year turbine factory Egypt signed an MoU for in June answers something faster.
Which answer does the third project confirm?
