The Switch tour visit

Multi-country tour of Yaskawa Environmental Energy

From Monday, June 10 through Friday, June 14, a special international delegation from Yaskawa came to visit four Yaskawa Environmental Energy facilities across two countries to become more familiar with our company and what makes us so unique.

Tatsuya Yamada, General Manager of Yaskawa’s Environmental & Social Systems K-Division, from the headquarters in Japan, and Bruno Schnekenburger, President & CEO of Yaskawa Europe, joined Jukka-Pekka Mäkinen, Dag Sandås, Risto Ahvo and others locally for the tour.

“The purpose of this tour was to gain more in-depth knowledge of the business opportunities and challenges at Yaskawa Environmental Energy / The Switch,” says Bruno.

Starting at our factory in Stord, Norway, the group visited our local operational unit to learn about our marine applications and solutions. They were then shown our Innovation Center, where they heard more about the Catapult initiative, which our Norwegian unit put into motion with the NCE Maritime CleanTech business cluster, the Norwegian Marine & Energy Complex (NMEC), and others, to help make the marine industry greener, smarter and more innovative.

On the second day, the trip continued to our location in Trondheim where our guests learned more about our converter roadmap.

“It was quite impressive to see the high level of R&D work going on here,” Bruno comments.

From Trondheim, the group flew on to our Lappeenranta factory in Finland. Here, they were given a tour of our production facilities and had several informative presentations on our Marine and Turbo/Industry units. The group also had the opportunity to witness some of the groundbreaking activities currently underway at our Large Drive Test Center right behind our Lappeenranta factory.

On the final day, the group went on to Vaasa, where the focus shifted to our operational unit and wind business. It was possible for them to see our impressive 10 MW permanent magnet generators being tested and prepared for shipment on to their final offshore destination in the North Sea.

“At all sites, the visitors were welcomed by warm hospitality from our personnel. Definitely, this was a worthwhile trip to give our business leaders a good foundation for future cooperation and further improvement of our business performance,” Jukka-Pekka says.

Bruno agrees. He said he was amazed at how well every meeting turned out exactly as planned along the way over the 5 ½ days. “I also appreciated the open discussions we had with Jukka-Pekka and his management team at the various locations – product development, business development and more.”

We had many good discussions about the past, present and future of our business.