Hansen Transmissions, a Belgian gearbox manufacturer which is owned by Suzlon Energy of India, listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange on 6 December. The IPO valued the company at £1.14 billion at the offer price of 175p. The shares moved ahead strongly in early dealings.
Hansen raised £289.2 million through the issue of 165.3 million new shares (before over allocation). The funds will be used for expansion of manufacturing capacity in India and China. The deal was lead managed by Goldman Sachs International and Merrill Lynch and co-managed by KBC Securities.The company, which was originally established in 1923 as a supplier to the industrial gear box market, has focused on the wind industry since 1979. Hansen ranks as the leading supplier of gearboxes to large-scale multi MegaWatt wind turbine manufacturers and is by far the market leader by MW supplied. According to the company’s own estimates, its share of the market for gear driven wind turbines with capacity of more than 1.5 MW is over 50%. Hansen supplies gearboxes to Vestas, Gamesa, Siemens Wind and Suzlon Energy. It is also working on the development of a customised gearbox with REpower (a Suzlon Energy subsidiary).
Hansen is expanding its dedicated wind turbine gearbox manufacturing facility in Lommel, Belgium, to increase capacity to 6,000 MW. When completed, this will be a fully integrated manufacturing facility for serial production of gearboxes for wind turbines of up to 6MW. The company is also building a plant in Coimbatore, India, at a cost of EUR270 million. The Indian plant is expected to have annual production capacity of up to 5,000 MW (up to 3,000 gear boxes). A EUR200 million manufacturing plant in China, with capacity of up to 3,000 MW, is also planned. The Chinese plant is set to become the key supplier to Suzlon Energy’s recently completed wind turbine manufacturing facility in Tianjin, China.
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