Wind turbine manufacturer Seaforth Energy Inc. is scaling up production with the help of an $88,000 grant from the provincial Productivity Investment Program.
The Dartmouth company recently bought its third blade mould, which allows it to more than triple production, Seaforth vice-president John Simon said at a news conference Thursday.
The wind turbine business is booming and Seaforth can barely keep up with demand, Simon said.
Last year, the company had one blade mould, which could only produce one complete three-piece set of blades each month. Then Seaforth added a second mould.
The third mould cost $100,000, about 20 per cent of which was covered by the province through the investment program.
It will make a huge difference because it is "designed better than the first two," Simon said. "So that one’s even more productive, it’s faster, and now we can have three going at once."
Economic and Rural Development and Tourism, which administers the grants, said the money will bring Seaforth a 50 per cent increase in productivity and improve sales revenue while creating six more jobs.
Aside from a $25,500 grant for equipment purchases, Seaforth also got $62,500 from the program for employee training.
The grant was announced in the wind turbine manufacturing workshop, where young workers in overalls bent over the two older blade moulds, gluing fibreglass in place. The blade-manufacturing technicians are apprentices from community colleges, said Simon.
The company has 20 employees, seven of whom have been hired in the past nine months.
Most of the companies supplying Seaforth with the parts to build the AOC 15-50 turbines are Nova Scotian, including Advanced Precision, a machining and fabrication company based in Dartmouth.
Seaforth Energy has installed turbines off the coast of the southern U.S., the Maritimes and Scotland, said company president Jonathan Barry.
Wind power production is a capital-intensive business, Barry said. But the global market for green energy is set up to help companies like Seaforth grow quickly. Several countries, including the U.K., Greece, Italy and Israel, offer a guaranteed rate on long 15- or 20-year contracts.
After installing the turbines, wind power providers like Seaforth receive 35 to 45 cents per kilowatt hour for the remainder of the contract.
These policies, called feed-in tariffs, are meant to encourage investment in renewable energy. Nova Scotia became the third province in Canada to announce its own feed-in tariff program last month.
The province has set a target of producing 25 per cent of its energy through clean, renewable sources by 2015. The target will go up to 40 per cent by 2020.
Economic Development Minister Percy Paris said Thursday that the province learned hard lessons during the offshore oil industry boom.
"We were in a predicament where we never had the highest-skilled individuals to do the offshore," Paris said. "Then when the offshore came onshore, there we were stuck again because we had to bring in people from outside our jurisdiction to do the jobs that should be done by Nova Scotians."
In Seaforth’s case, the investment program will help ensure that it has the skilled workers it needs, he said.
Though green energy job training is a priority, the province does not give special funding preference to companies in the green energy sector, the minister said.
The Productivity Investment Program, launched in November, has approved or disbursed funding for a variety of local companies, including boatbuilders A.F. Theriault & Son Ltd. ($21,000), Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters ($46,185), Nicom IT Solutions ($9,980) and Maritime Pride Eggs ($18,188).
The program covers up to 20 percent of equipment purchases, reimbursed after the company has submitted proof of purchase, and up to 90 percent of training costs.
The province had previously given Seaforth a $200,000 loan guarantee in September 2010 from the Industrial Expansion Fund.
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