In a deal worth some CHF 40m (about EUR 26.4m), Swiss composites developer and producer Gurit (Wattwill; www.gurit.com) has signed an agreement to acquire wind blade mould manufacturer Suzhou Red Maple Wind Blade Mould (Suzhou, Jiangsu Province / China; www.redmaplewind.com). As part of the transaction, Gurit will buy Cheer Tech Investment (Hong Kong), the operational holding company of Suzhou Red Maple, from Windy Shore Holdings (British Virgin Islands).

The acquisition, which is scheduled to be completed before year’s end, is part of Gurit’s strategic expansion into the rapidly growing Asian wind energy market. As China’s leading producer of wind turbine blade moulds, Suzhou Red Maple’s 500 employees generated sales of about CHF 30m (EUR 19.8m) in 2009.

The earnings of the new business, which will be headed by Suzhou Red Maple’s existing management team under Gabriel Mironov, will be accredited to Gurit immediately. As a direct result of the deal, China will become the Swiss company’s largest global manufacturing base.