Show notes
Andreas Kipker, CEO of Jupiter Bach, discusses their dominance in wind turbine nacelle and spinner cover manufacturing and major U.S. expansion plans, including a new 20,000-square-foot facility in Pensacola and two decades of partnership with GE Vernova.
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Allen Hall: Welcome back to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. And today we have an exceptional guest who brings deep insight from one of the wind industry's most important manufacturing sectors. Andreas Kipker is the CEO of Jupiter Bach, the world's largest supplier of nacelle and spinner covers for wind turbines.
Andreas joins us at an exciting time for Jupiter Bach the company just celebrated a remarkable 20 year partnership with GE Vernova and broke ground on a 20, 000 square foot expansion of their Pensacola, Florida facility.
And today under Andreas's leadership, Jupiter Bach operates state of the art manufacturing facilities across Europe, Asia, and North America. The company's focus goes beyond just manufacturing. They're driving innovation in composite materials and. Engineering to help reduce the levelized cost of energy for wind power.
Andreas, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight.
Andreas Kipker: Thank you very much. Pleased to be here. Thanks for the opportunity.
Allen Hall: Well, Jupiter Bach is the world's largest supplier of nacelles and spinner covers. Could you give us just a sense of what your global footprint looks like?
Andreas Kipker: Absolutely. Happy to do that.
Yeah, so, um, In the global market, we consider ourselves leaders. We have, um, we have factories. We have four main manufacturing facilities one in China two in Europe, then Poland and Lithuania, and then one in Sonia, Florida. Um, and then adding to that's where we do our composites. And then, and in addition to that, we have we have a number of assembly sites that are.
closer to servicing this Nacelle manufacturing plants assembly plants of our customers. So they're spread. Somewhat in the same regions, but but closer to customers.
Allen Hall: Well, you just recently celebrated 20 years with G. E. Vernova, which is remarkable. And you're also expanding a facility down in Florida to another 20, 000 square feet.
What is your footprint right now in Florida alone?
Andreas Kipker: I'm a little bit in doubt, actually, the exact number. We're around 100, 000 square foot in in, in, in Florida today of, um, of. on the roof. And then it's a process that takes a bit of outdoors storage at outdoor space as well. So, the site itself is significantly bigger.
You will know this from blade manufacturing plants as well, that the parts are quite big. So it takes a little bit of storage around. But yeah, we're super excited to have to have longstanding relationship with with several of our customers, but G we just we just reached this milestone.
Um, um, so yeah, proud of that.
Joel Saxum: I think it's important to to talk about nacelles here, right? Like when you see, when you say when we're in the wind world, where Alan and I touch most of the time, everybody in the large manufacturing space, you hear about gearbox manufacturers, bearing manufacturers, and then a few tower things here and there, but it's mostly blades.
Everybody's worried. You know, what's TPI here? What's Iris doing here? What's, You know, LM doing here or how is that all working? But the part that's like the most recognizable part on the whole turbine, the nacelle, it's the box that holds the brains. It's the thing that gets all of the work done inside of it.
We don't talk about that much. And I think one of the reasons is there's usually not very many issues with it, right?
Andreas Kipker: No, I would say we do not see a lot of issues. I think we could in, in all fairness, talk a little bit more about it because There's a lot of safety features that allows our technicians, not our technicians, but the industry's technicians to, to carry out their job safely is really important.
Things that we mount on on, on, on the nacelle. So yeah it, it deserves probably a little bit more face time in in a world where we where we expose our technicians to a lot of a lot of risks and we need to keep them safe from that.
Allen Hall: So let's talk about the nacelle for a minute.
The nacelles are made out of. Basically fiberglass and foam is that how they're constructed?
Andreas Kipker: Before I joined Jupyterbug, I worked in a company that supplies blade manufacturers. The materials that are being used here are very much the same. It's slightly different densities of foam because it does less of a structural load than a blade, but yeah, we're talking about.
Glass fibers, foams, and then the typical resin systems as well. And then surprisingly enough quite a bit of steel parts that are mounted on on that as well.
Allen Hall: So the approach from Jupiter. Box manufacturing, and I've seen some things on YouTube, which are quite interesting how you do this.
It is a resident fusion process, very similar to blades, but instead of making a, you know, a shell, you're making these panels, but then it's sort of a modular assembly, right?
Andreas Kipker: Different OEMs have different design philosophies, and we work with them on optimizing that. Some are focusing on the ease of the assembly plant, and some are focusing more on The flexibility in, in, in the supply chain.
So we see it going both ways. We do manufacture both parts that that are quite modular, but we do also manufacture a lot of parts that are quite significant in size and do not fit into a container in in, in any way. That that's also why we have.
Regional setups and some setups that are, need to be closer to the customer so that we can assemble these containerized parts into something that's easier to install for turbine for the OEM.
Allen Hall: Can we use GE as an example here? You're manufacturing basic sub assemblies down in Pensacola, Florida, and then they're moving them up to Schenectady, New York, which is nearby to me, and then you're assembling them.
near the manufacturing facility that GE has established. Isn't that the process?
Andreas Kipker: We have this plant down in Florida that makes actually fully fully assembled nacelles. It's an oversized transport that goes down to the GE factory as well. When we talk about the parts in Schenectady, these are these are from a different design philosophy.
Where we manufacture them offshore. We sent them into Schenectady and then we mount them in Schenectady to to ease the assembly at the GE plant in Schenectady. So, so actually GE has I hope I'm not giving anything away here, but they will they use both design methodologies.
And you will see that if you see the the turbine up close.
Allen Hall: Quite amazing. Okay. So some of your OEMs, even internally to a single OEM asking for like a full completed. Nacelle, other ones want something that's modular. That's really fascinating. And on top of that, they're asking you to install a bunch of a number of safety features and accessories to these nacelles that, there's, it's quite complicated now.
It used to be when, years ago, the nacelles tend to be really simple. Now they've figured out that they can add on a lot of features to the nacelles, right?
Andreas Kipker: And we see that as some of our value add here in trying to take these parts that can be mounted already in advance. That does not have to go into the assembly line at at the OEM facility.
And we try to take that over, prepare that, make it as easy as possible, mounting as much as we can on the covers. But then also, um, preparing kits. So they are, so they fit right for installation into the assembly line. So yeah, that, that's an avenue that we have been trying to go.
Going down that road with a higher pace over the past two years. Um, so yeah we, we see the need in certain markets for that, for sure.
Joel Saxum: I like the approach because one of the things that you hear, whether you're at an offshore conference, an onshore conference, or you're talking to Anybody in development, it's all about supply chain, right?
It's like supply chain, building out local supply chain. How can we optimize the supply chain? Um, you know, like to the point where procurement, good procurement people in supply chain, people in wind are, they're worth gold, right? But if, so you guys are taking on a bit of that front end work and alleviating the pressures from the OEMs to get it done themselves is what it sounds like.
Andreas Kipker: Absolutely. And, um, you'd say in a growth market that's making a lot of sense, right? You, yeah, you go to less parts that you need to procure, less logistics that you need to worry about. And we step into that role as a partner.
Joel Saxum: Um, so Jupiter Buck sees that sees that I don't want to say revenue, but let's see that opportunity and just grabs, grabs it as well.
It's a good place to be.
Andreas Kipker: We see it as a way of. servicing our customers much better. So, yes, it gives us more revenue, but it also, and I think more importantly for me,