Chinese partnerships are fuelling a four-way race to build a MENA industry to build components for wind farms

Egypt’s bid to build a domestic wind turbine industry may be taking its first baby steps: Chinese renewables manufacturer Sany Group has signed a memorandum that could see it build Egypt’s first wind turbine factory and a 2GW wind farm in the Gulf of Suez, the Egyptian cabinet said in a statement. Neither Egypt nor Sany have confirmed how much the plant will cost or when it might open, but our Egypt desk reported earlier this month that the company will sink more than USD 300 mn into the factory, which is set to be built in the Suez Canal Economic Zone.

Why it matters: Egypt is the latest bidder in what could become a four-way regional contest to build a manufacturing base for wind power components. Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Oman are all going down the same road — each leaning on the Chinese for the technology and each pitching itself as an export platform that feeds turbine components into Europe and Africa.

The goal is moving up the value chain from hosting wind farms — which the region has done for more than a decade — to making the hardware. The open question is whether each can build a truly localized industry or just host assembly lines that help Chinese producers secure access to tricky markets.

SOUND SMART- Wind turbines are a complex business. Localizing the full manufacturing stack usually happens in a predictable order, set by how hard each part is to move and to make. Towers go first, as studies into localization efforts in other markets, like South Africa, show. They’re hollow steel, which makes them easier to make and ship, as Ras Ghareb Wind Energy CEO Hans Bruins told us earlier this year, saying moving one from plant to installation was “basically transporting a lot of air.” Blades come next. At around 100 m, they’re costly to truck and easily damaged in transit, so the logistics case for local production is strong even though they’re harder to build. The nacelle — generator, gearbox, and control systems — come last. It’s the most technologically complex and capital-intensive input, and by IRENA's count, the part that needs the most manufacturing work, accounting for about half the labor in a wind farm’s main components.

Morocco is a frontrunner today: Siemens Gamesa opened a blade plant in Tangier back in October 2017, billed as the first wind-turbine-blade factory in Africa and the Middle East. Since then, more players have entered Morocco, targeting blades and the components that go into their making. Chinese blade maker Aeolon opened its first factory outside its home market at Nador West Med port-linked industrial zone, with an investment of around EUR 220 mn good enough to allow it to make 600 blade sets a year for sale to European, African, and Middle Eastern markets. Spanish components supplier Incom is now working on its third plant in Tangier — it entered the Moroccan market in 2020 to serve Siemens Gamesa’s industrial operations. About 65% of Incom’s output in Morocco is now shipped to the US (where the Trump administration has since decided it really, really doesn’t like wind power).

Saudi Arabia has the highest localization targets, but it’s yet to build the factory: The Kingdom is the region's largest wind market by ambition, saying it wants to install 40 GW of wind power out of a targeted total 130 GW of renewables by 2030. In 2024, it put its sovereign muscle behind manufacturing, and the PIF's RELC formed a JV with China’s second largest turbine producer Envision Energy as well as Saudi private sector player Vision Industries to explore making everything for the wind supply chain. And while Saudi Arabia has the most aggressive localization mandate in the region for renewable energy at 75% by 2030, the Kingdom is yet to announce any projects. The RELC JV has been silent since it was announced in 2024 signing, for example, and the kingdom still imports its turbines through Jeddah and Dammam, the only two ports that can handle the oversized cargo.

Oman was first in the Gulf to actually break ground. Mawarid Turbine Company, a subsidiary of state energy group OQ, lunched the first phase of a turbine plant at the Duqm special economic zone in April 2025 — an initial ticket above USD 200 mn, up to ~1 GW of annual capacity, and technology licensed from China's Shanghai Electric. Crucially, Oman solved the demand side at the same time — OQ's renewables arm will take equity stakes in the wind projects that buy the turbines, locking in a pipeline of roughly 1.1 GW across Duqm, Mahout, and Sadah. The project is planned to launch this year, but the details are sparse on what the exact turbine component that will be produced in the plant — reports are saying the plant will make 6.3 MW and 9.6 MW turbines

Egypt arrives with the 2 GW headline and little else nailed down. The Sany factory’s first phase will reportedly supply a 1 GW wind project in the Gulf of Suez, with other components imported until local lines run. That staging is normal — wind localization is a sequenced game.

REMEMBER- The wind factory is one piece of a wider Egyptian localization push that relies heavily on China’s world-leading technologies. On a January visit to Beijing, Electricity Minister Mahmoud Esmat oversaw a run of MoUs through state-linked Kemet: a USD 500 mn, 5 GW solar cell and module complex with GCL, a USD 200 mn, 5 GWh battery factory with Cornex, and Egypt’s first inverter and grid-connection plant with TBEA. Separately, China's Sungrow is building a 10 GWh battery plant in the SCZONE, the first of its kind in MEA. The Sany turbine deal extends that pattern into the hardest segment to localize.

The catch is the same everywhere: a factory is only bankable if the demand and the financing are in place. The chain of events is simple in project finance: An attractive tariff paid by the state utility on solid long-term offtake agreements attracts the developers, who then ask, “Can I buy the components in-market, or do I need to import?”

The demand-side lock is where the region splits: Oman has tied its demand to its factory through OQ's equity stakes, and Saudi Arabia has tied a hard 75% localization percentage to get industrial funding — while Egypt has a softer target of up to 60% local content, which may be up for a revision soon.

As the experience in Brazil shows, it’s all going to boil down to policy. Over roughly a decade, Brazil went from importing turbines to making about 80% of them domestically — on the back of a single instrument. Development bank BNDES made cheap project financing conditional on local content. Brazil ended up with a deep manufacturing base and it forced players like Vestas, Suzlon, Siemens, and others, who were locked out of a multi-USD bns market for some time, to localize. India built a comparable base over a longer arc on the back of Suzlon and “Make in India” local-content rules.