Vestas seeks planning consent for £50 million UK R&D centre

Vestas wants to locate the state-of-the-art R&D facility on a former cement works factory on the western bank of the River Medina, just north of the island’s capital Newport.

Vestas already has a blade manufacturing plant and its UK technology arm headquartered on the Isle of Wight. Together, these two divisions employ around 600 people across two sites.

The new R&D centre is expected to create at least another 150 new high-skilled engineering jobs, plus other ancillary jobs, and allow Vestas to test the world’s largest wind turbines. It means the Isle of Wight will become a major innovation hub in Vestas' global R&D business, placing it among the company’s top five technology centres, alongside Denmark, Singapore, India and the USA. 

“This centre is a vital part of Vestas global R&D programme,” said Vestas Technology managing director Rob Sauven. “It means we will be able to prototype and test the largest blades in the world.”

Details of the planning application confirm the technology centre will be in one large building, comprising of three ‘halls’ covering over 19,000 square feet of floor space, where the prototype blades will be tested, plus three floors of design offices.

The planning application was submitted by the South East Development Agency (SEEDA), which owns the 15-acre brownfield site called West Medina Mills, due to its 18th century connections with a tide mill.

“We are extremely pleased that Vestas, the world’s leading supplier of wind power solutions, is to be the future occupier of the site. This is a world class business in a sector that is offering significant growth opportunities for the future,” said SEEDA’s development director Peter Cusdin.

The R&D centre, which is to be built to high quality sustainable design standards and will include a green roof and green screens, is due to open by the end of 2010.

SEEDA and Vestas said they planned to start construction on the new building by the summer of 2009, pending planning consent.

Vestas, meanwhile, is partnering on another planning application on the Isle of Wight. It has teamed up with renewable energy company Cornwall Light & Power (CLP) to build three 125-metre tall wind turbines, capable of generating nine megawatts of electricity, at Cheverton Down on the south of the island.

Vestas is acting as CLP’s turbine supply partner on the project in return for using the Cheverton site as a base for research and development for the prototype blades that it will be designing at West Medina Mills.

This summer Vestas announced it was also investing in its blade production facility on the Isle of Wight, switching production at the main factory from 40-metre to 44-metre blades to help meet the growing number of wind turbines needed globally and in the UK, now the world’s leading offshore wind market.  

"Vestas is very committed to the UK market and has been present from the very start of wind energy in Great Britain," Finn Strøm Madsen, president of the company's research and development division, said at the time.

In its latest results, the company reported a 67 per cent growth in its order books.