Posted At : December 4, 2009 2:00 PM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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I recently spoke to Mike Roman, the head of 3M’s Renewable Energy Division to ask how it came to pass that the company “is more than post-it notes.” He indulged my bad joke, something he’s probably heard 1,000 times already. But all kidding aside, 3M is a lot more than sticky notes and Scotch tape, and now it’s in the renewable energy supply chain, with a new division to build the brand and coordinate product lines. That’s not entirely accurate; the company has been in various pieces of renewables for decades, but it hadn’t decided to put it under one umbrella until February. As one indication of how seriously 3M considers the venture, it’s the first new division the chemicals giant has created in nine years.
The division has two branches, energy generation and energy management, which is focused on the efficiency market, including films and coatings for windows. But films tapes, coatings and adhesives have wide applications in the renewable energy supply chain. The product lines include films and coatings that can serve product lines like wind turbine blades, backsheet for solar modules, even adhesives for solar and wind products that can withstand extreme environments, all the way down to tapes and similar products to maintain electrical components, probably too many to name here. “Our focus in solar and wind is to help our customers bring down the cost per kilowatt.” Roman says.
The company doesn’t separate earnings from the unit, wrapping it into one of the five units, in this case, industrial and transportation, 3M’s biggest with revenue of $8 billion. He added that outside of manufacturing, the division employs 300 worldwide, about half of that based in the U.S. 3M just built a new plant in Singapore to serve Asian markets and as a global company with a footprint that extends far beyond its Minnesota roots, about 65 percent of sales originate offshore. But the company has also committed to an expansion program “you want the source closer to your markets” in the U.S. The company has committed to when it expands an existing plant for new or existing products; each represents an investment of from $5 million to $30 million. The company is now in the middle of an expansion of its film plant in Decatur, Alabama.
Like many companies focused on renewable energy, sales have suffered as projects have been delayed or cancelled due to the financial crisis. But overall the division’s revenues are increasing as 3M find more and more applications in renewable resources for its new and existing components. “Some of these products went directly from our existing lines while others we tweaked the formula some to adapt it to these new technologies,” Roman says. And at a company with a long history of research and product development, new applications are expected to be discovered for quite some time.
Posted At : December 3, 2009 6:19 PM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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Dow Corning CEO Stephanie Burns sees the absurdity of manufacturing polycrystalline silicon in the U.S., seeing it shipped offshore for the manufacture of wafers and modules, which are then tran...
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Posted At : December 1, 2009 5:42 PM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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Posted At : November 30, 2009 9:51 AM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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Posted At : November 24, 2009 10:27 AM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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Fifty years ago the launch of Sputnik spawned a Defense Department research arm, which, among other things, is merely credited with laying the foundation for the creation of the civilian Internet. The...
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Posted At : November 20, 2009 1:27 PM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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If what happens on the coasts of the U.S. helps set trends in culture and business, then perhaps this week I witnessed in New York some of what the rest country will experience before too long. The Ad...
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Posted At : November 19, 2009 12:08 PM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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A second Industrial Revolution, that is. I hear that often at renewable energy conferences, and this week is no different. I’m at the two-day Advanced Energy New York 2009 conference on Long Isl...
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Posted At : November 17, 2009 6:10 PM
| Posted By : Bill Opalka
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The recent news that a Texas wind developer and its Chinese manufacturing partner will build a 600-megawatt project using 240 foreign-made turbines that result in jobs for the Chinese funded by U.S. t...
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