GE Announces Turbine Blading Group Acquisition at Power-Gen '98

Yesterday during Power-Gen '98 GE announced that it has acquired the UK's Turbine Blading Group (TBG). TBG designs, re-engineerings, manufactures, and repairs turbine blades. According to GE, TBG will become a wholly-owned subsidiary within GE's Inspection and Repair Services Group. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

TBG sells components to customers in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The company also offers repair services to companies in all of these nations. TBG has been doing business in the electric power industry around the world for nearly 30 years.

As a member of GE's Inspection and Repair Services Group, TBG will also will be a part of GE's Energy Services team, which is the fastest growing component of GE's Power Systems team. The Energy Services team provides contractual services, such as long-term service agreements and operations and maintenance contracts, equipment upgrades, repowering and powerplant life-extensions. The goal of this team is to become a single-source supplier for any and all power generation needs.

According to GE Energy Services President Ricardo Artigas: "this acquisition greatly improves our capability to respond to our customers' requests for parts and services for both steam and gas turbines manufactured by other OEMs. Turbine Blading is highly complementary to our recent acquisition of Preferred Machine & Tool, and provides a solid foundation for us to apply GE engineering and technology to meet our customers' needs for re-engineered parts. We're also pleased to announce the Turbine Blading Group CEO Michael Fraser has agreed to stay within the organization to help integrate TBG within GE's current global service network."

In an effort to increase their energy market offerings in the Energy Services group, GE has been acquiring assets, such as smaller turbines (Nuovo Pignone) and microturbines (Elliott Energy Systems), over the past four years. In addition, GE acquired Stewart & Stevenson's Gas Turbine Division this year. This acquisition gives GE significant experience in packaging and servicing small power generation equipment.

According to Artigas: "with each of these additions, GE furthers its integrated approach to the energy market, allowing us to widen our lead over the competition. Our power generation products range from the largest central power plants to the smallest, on-site distributed generation opportunities."