Driven by the robust domestic market demand, the city's power-generating equipment manufacturers are set to chalk up their best-ever performance records this year.

Shanghai Turbine Company Ltd (STC) is among the manufacturers who are set to maintain a strong growth momentum in the coming several years.

"Our yearly output volume will exceed 8,120 megawatt by the end of this month, and that will be a big jump over last year's figure,'' Huang Zheng, spokesman for STC, told China Daily.

A top-notch player in China's turbine manufacturing sector, STC turned out in 2002 less than 5,000 megawatts of steam turbines, key equipment in thermal power-generating units.

"We've set our production target next year at over 10,000 megawatts,'' said Huang.

If achieved, that manufacturing scale will further strengthen STC's position in the domestic power-generating equipment industry, analysts said.

With its predecessor being Shanghai Turbine Works (STW), China's oldest turbine producer, STC is a joint venture set up in 1995 between STW and the US-based Westhouse Electric Corp. German industrial giant Siemens took over the latter's stakes in 1999.

STC -- including its antecedent STW established 50 years ago -- has produced over 80,000 megawatts of power station turbines, accounting for about 32 per cent of the total domestic installed capacity.

The company in late November clinched a big deal with Huaneng Power International Inc to provide turbines for four 1,000 megawatt ultra-supercritical power-generating units -- the first of its kind throughout China -- for the latter's power plant at Yuhuan of East China's Zhejiang Province.

Compared with the commonly-used supercritical power units, those ultra-supercritical units are able to function more efficiently and powerfully since they are expected to perform under higher steam pressure and temperature in thermal power generation.

The Yuhuan power plant is among quite a large number of similar facilities under construction or in the blueprint stage throughout China, given the country's increasingly power shortages in recent years.

Huang of STC refused to reveal the value of his company's portion in the whole deal worth over 1.8 billion yuan (US$217.7 million). The deal also involves several other domestic key equipment producers, including Shanghai Turbine Generator Co Ltd, which is expected to provide turbine generators for the power stations.

Yet Huang said the major turbine technology in the ultra-supercritical units is based on what is to be introduced from Germany-based Siemens, and domestic manufacturers are expected to gradually scale up their contributions to the turbine components needed.

Besides turbines for the ultra-supercritical units, STC will also focus on the development of 1,000-megawatt-level nuclear power turbines and gas turbines, according to Huang.

Such undertakings are described by Huang as a major "command height'' that needs to be secured for STC to further reach a bulwark in its position on the domestic market, though the market demand now looks quite bullish.

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