Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. Agreed to Sell Its Wind-turbine Business to Hitachi Ltd.

Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. (7270), maker of the Subaru brand of cars, agreed to sell its wind-turbine business to Hitachi Ltd. (6501), an electronics and industrial machinery manufacturer. The companies will begin discussions on the specific terms of the agreement and plan to complete the sale by July 1, they said today in a joint statement. Hitachi will pay about 1 billion yen ($12 million) to acquire the business, its spokesman Yuki Maeda said by phone. The company posted about 27 billion yen in sales from the wind business for the year ended March 2011, he said. Fuji Heavy’s revenue from the segment was about 5 billion yen during the same period, its spokesman Kenta Matsumoto said by phone. Japan is gearing up for more clean energy following the nuclear accident at Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant last year. “Specifically in the area of wind power generation systems, further introduction and expansion in Japan is widely predicted, ” the companies said in the statement. The two companies together developed a 2-megawatt downwind type power generation system in 2003 and a total of 25 units have been delivered to six sites in Japan, according to the statement. Hitachi plans to consolidate the resources of the two companies “to enhance the design and development capability, and integrate the manufacturing and distribution, ” they said in the statement. Fuji Heavy will focus on its other divisions, including Subaru, according to the statement. Source: bloomberg.com