Engineering knowledge and innovation are crucial in meeting the challenges of wind farm development, and meeting them safely. Hailo’s Managing Director, Winfried Czilwa, speaks to PES about how the company has gone from pioneer to being Europe’s largest climbing equipment manufacturer.
PES: Welcome back to PES magazine. How has business been since we last spoke? Have your activities in the wind energy arena continued to be successful?
Winfried Czilwa: Those who in this period – in which classical power generation is increasingly making negative headlines – are not successfully tapping into wind power, are doing something wrong. We are developing particularly excellently, above all, in our home market of Europe and our country subsidiaries in China, the USA, India and Brazil are developing very well too.
As a result of our strategic “best in class” positioning, which we not only support with our well-known product quality, but also with our global concepts in particular, we now have a unique selling point within the sector. Furthermore, we have expanded our product portfolio, and are manufacturing ever more tower installations at our facilities.
PES: Do you get involved in retro-fits on offshore farms? If so, how do your engineers manage with the adverse environmental conditions?
WC: The new offshore wind farms are fully pre-fitted with climbing technology and service lifts in advance. Here, Hailo is already a vendor, with ladders, fall protection systems and lifts at numerous wind farms. To name just a few examples, we are supplying the Thornton Bank wind farm with ladders, fall protection systems and lifts for 6 REpower 5M towers. At Ormonde, in the Irish Sea, we have 30 REpower 6M towers equipped with Hailo ladders and service lifts.
