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TECO's Green Energy and High-efficiency Motor Businesses Continue Humming

2014/09/15 | By Steve Chuang

Following years of developing its green energy products and high-efficiency motor businesses, TECO Electric & Machinery Co., Ltd., an established Taiwanese supplier of household appliances, motors and electrical machinery, has seen the efforts gradually pay off to enjoy sustainable development.

As part of its green energy business policy, TECO's most recent move to enhance presence in the Chinese market for terrestrial wind turbines is the start-up of its brand new assembly plant in Hunan Province, central China, scheduled at the end of September. Although already licensed by the local government for wind energy operation, the firm's directors emphasized that the company is not planning yet to operate a wind farm in China, and will, instead, continue supplying large-sized wind turbines to local wind power firms.

This year, the directors confirmed, TECO will deliver 25 land-use wind turbines with capacity of 2 megawatts each, along with three special models with long rotor blades specifically for sub-6-meter-per-second ambiant wind. The company will earn NT$70 million (US$2.33 million) from those wind turbines each.

TECO also looks optimistically at the opportunities presented by Japan's Akita government's project to set up 20 5-megawatt offshore wind turbines off the coast of Akita Ken, which has attracted with tenders to be issued in November interest from TECO and many Taiwanese financial firms.

Notably TECO has been involved in Taiwan Power Company's project to develop a model wind farm off the coast of the Miaoli and Changhua region, central Taiwan, despite the state-owned utility having yet made concrete progress on the project.

The company has also been exploring the segment for IE3 high-efficiency motors, and plans to set up an assembly plant in Japan, mainly motivated by Japan's policy to stop sales of IE2 motors to completely replace them with higher-efficiency IE3 models by 2015, which is expected to generate business opportunities worth about NT$230 billion.

So TECO wants to establish a plant to supply a full range of high-efficiency motors with power ranging 0.75kW to 375kW, including universal motors, explosion-proof motors, aluminum-housed lightweight motors and rolled steel frame motors, to tap such business opportunity, aiming to become the largest foreign motor brand in the country.

TECO has been massively turning out IE3 motors since 2007, and command dominant market shares in Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia and Taiwan. The company's high-efficiency motors all meet international standards, including CNS, IEC, NEMA, GB and JIS to feature high price-to-quality ratio.

The firm finished the first half (H1) of this year with consolidated revenue of NT$27.774 billion (US$925.8 million), with gross profit rate of 24.77% for Q2, 1.29 percentages more than 23.49% in Q1. For H1, the firm's operating profits and net profits totaled NT$2.531 billion (US$84.36 million) and NT$2.331 billion (US$77.7 million), respectively, with EPS (earnings per share) of NT$1.18, improving from NT$1.01 posted in the same period of last year.

With thriving motors and green energy businesses, which together contribute 50-60% to turnover, the firm expects banner performance to continue into H2. (SC)