- Dominique Pouliquen
Dominique Pouliquen, Country President of Alstom China, SVP Asia-Pacific Region of Alstom Transport
My first experience in China was about 12 years ago, when I first had opportunities to work on Transport Metro projects for Alstom Transport. At that time, I was already impressed y the dimension of the countries and cities that I was visiting, and also the huge cultural and historical differences. It was somehow a shock and wake-up call for me about a world that I did not know, but which was obviously deeply evolving and entering a new cycle.
Since then, China has radically changed, massively invested in infrastructure projects, integrated new technologies, boosted their own local companies, and stepped on international markets as well. This evolution is fascinating and opens a lot of opportunities for Alstom, but also invite us to adapt our business model, to best respond to this development.
I am even more concerned to meet these challenges since based in Beijing and became Alstom China Country President in 2010, covering the 3 Alstom sectors, ie Power, Transport and Grid, in addition to my Alstom Transport position as Senior Vice President for Asia Pacific.
China is a key market for Alstom, with about 10,000 employes, in about 30 sites and units all over the country. It is the number one market world-wide both in Power, Grid included, and Transport. Local competition is now mature and leads us to even more adapt our footprint, through more localisation, long term partnerships, adapted product portfolio, research and innovation and development of our local talents
Alstom is for sure very much motivated to respond to these challenges. In November 2010 we inaugurated our new hydropower manufacturing facility at Tianjin, in which we have largely invested. This brand new site is a 100% green site, with no Co2 emission at all, and built on new environmental techniques, such as solar panels, water cooling systems, with a capacity to manufacture up to 30 turbine and generator units per annum with outputs ranging from 20 MW to 1000 MW.
By its acquisition in June 2010 of Areva T&D’s transmission business, Alstom formed a new sector named Alstom Grid, to supplement the existing two sectors in power generation and rail transport, Power and Transport. At the heart of the development of Smart Grid, Alstom Grid offers products, services and integrated energy management solutions across the full energy value chain - from power generation, through transmission and distribution grids and to the large end user.
On 7 December 2010, Patrick Kron, Alstom President and Chief Executive Officer, signed a long-term cooperation agreement with Liu Zhijun, Minister of Chinese Railways, in the presence of Mr. Zhang Dejiang, Chinese Vice Premier. Under the terms of the agreement, Alstom and MoR will accelerate new areas of cooperation, on a wide spectrum of rail transport mainline segments, including rolling stock (intercity, high speed trains, locomotives), signalling (for intercity and high speed railway) and Transmission (for all new mainline electrification projects), both for the Chinese Market and International Markets, when leading both parties to better competitive position.
Overall, all these efforts demonstrate the Alstom strategic intent towards China. The Infrastructure market is growing still and will continue to grow over the next decade, triggered both by the accelerating urbanization and Chinese government’s increasing concern on clean energy. China has around 230 cities with more than 1 million residents which generate a huge demand for transportation and energy. Chinese government is also very concerned by the importance of the environmental protection, and thus very much promotes new types of power supply through green energy.
Alstom is ready to face these challenges, with leading edge technologies in Railways transportation systems, state of the art solutions in Power Transmission, including Smart Grid solutions, and a unique portfolio in Power with Wind, Solar and Carbon Storage solutions, for both new plants and existing plants as well.
I am confident that we can meet these challenges and vary positively respond to this new business cycle. Our success will come from our expertise, innovation capabilities, engineering competencies, service and maintenance know-how, and also from our engagement to be even more a local Chinese company. As said, we have around 10,000 employees working in more than 30 entities. In addition, we have also established sound and wide partnerships with a lot of Chinese companies.
All these demonstrate that Alstom is widely present in China, and capable to develop a real intimacy and proximity with our customers.
I do believe that Alstom enjoys a promising and exciting future in China. In the coming year, we will passionately strive to build exciting achievements.