Asian power equipment mart may reach $40b by 2000: ADB
Asian power equipment mart may reach $40b by 2000: ADB
SINGAPORE (AFP): Asia's thirst for electricity to drive its growth will create a market of up to US$40 billion for new power equipment by 2000, an official of ABB ASEA Brown Bovery Ltd. said here yesterday.
"Asia's rapid growth presents both an unprecedented opportunity and an enormous challenge to the world's leading power systems suppliers," said Rolf Kehlhofer, who heads the Swiss-Swedish group's gas turbine and combined cycle power-plant operations.
He said that demand for electricity was outstripping supply by seven percent a year in the region, with China alone requiring 10,000-to-15,000 megawatts of new capacity annually to meet economic growth forecasts.
Most of the power equipment will have to be imported, added Kehlhofer, who was attending a regional power-industry conference in Singapore.
Kehlhofer told AFP that worldwide demand for new power capacity was forecast to reach 100,000 megawatts by 2000, generating orders worth $70 billion-to-80 billion in new equipment, half of it to be sold in Asia.
He said the Zurich-based ABB, ranked 38th on the Fortune 500 list, was aiming for annual worldwide revenues from power projects of $15 billion-to-16 billion by 2000, from the current $10 billion.
The ABB group, which employs nearly 208,000 people in 1,000 companies worldwide, had a total turnover of $29.7 billion and net profit of $760 million in 1994.
Power generation and transmission orders accounted for almost half the total revenues of the group, which also has industrial, financial services, transportation and other activities.
ABB has become a major force in the region's power market, specializing in comprehensive projects from design to equipment supply and plant operation.
It is building a mammoth 1,300 megawatt combined cycle power plant in Lumut, Malaysia, the country's largest, and early this year completed a similar 1,180 megawatt plant in Indonesia.
The Malaysian and Indonesian plants are the third and fifth largest plants of their kind in the world, Kehlhofer said.
Combined cycle plants are increasingly popular in Asia because of their low cost and short installation periods, an ABB spokesman said. The process involves gas-fired turbines which power a generator and produce exhaust that is used to create steam to drive another turbine, maximizing plant efficiency.