Taiwan-based Swancor, dedicated to supplying materials for wind turbine blades, expects its revenues to grow significantly on price hikes starting the second quarter of the year and rapid increases in demand for carbon fiber composite materials.
Swancor said it has raised quotes for epoxy resin and hardener for wind turbine blades by 10-30% since March-April to reflect cost increases for raw materials, with its gross margins to gradually rebound to reasonable levels from a low of 13% in the first quarter of the year.
The company expects its 2021 shipments of epoxy resin and wind turbine blade hardener to grow 15-20% and 5-10%, respectively, from 2020.
But shipments of carbon fiber composite materials for wind turbine blades will show the highest on-year growth at 50-70% as it has signed supply contracts with the world's leading turbine solutions providers Siemens Gamesa and MIHI Vesta.
Swancor has aimed to become the world's leader in the supply of wind turbine blade materials in 2022, and will challenge a 25% share of the Asian market for epoxy resin, 25% of global supply of wind turbine blade hardener and 30% of the world market for carbon fiber composite materials for such blades by 2025, according to the company.
To meet increasing demand for green energy, Swancor will enforce capacity expansions at its plants in both Taiwan and China, with carbon fiber pre-preg and pultrusion fiber carbon plate also among the items to see capacity increases.
The company will also move to set up its production capacity in Europe, now the main market for wind turbines, by acquiring production lines there or some other practices. It plans to start production of wind turbine blade hardeners in Europe in the first half of 2022 before entering production of epoxy resin and carbon fiber composite materials there in 2023.
