Capstone Turbine Corporation (NASDAQ:CPST) has completed significant upgrades to its International Remanufacturing Facility (IRF) in the UK.
The facility, located in the southern English city of Gosport, was opened in 2011 as a hub for field service engineers to provide remanufactured parts for its turbines. Now, as the expansion of its distributor network has ended the need for on-site engineers, the operation has been retooled as a turbines system test facility.
Work has been ongoing since 2016, the company said, and on December 18, Capstone opened the new facility alongside its UK distributor Pure World Energy.
READ: Capstone Turbine posts 20% bump in fiscal 3Q aftermarket service, DSS program, rental revenue
The UK IRF facility now mirrors its US-based counterparts, with the addition of complex remanufacturing processes such as turbine powerhead rebuild and balancing operations.
"Capstone can now locally support a fleet of thousands of microturbines with the same high-quality aftermarket support previously only available for our Capstone US manufacturing and remanufacturing facility," Senior Vice President of Customer Service and Product Development Jeff Foster said in a statement. "This will further improve aftermarket margins and will increase the availability of our customers' critical distributed energy assets in this growing geographic market."
Remanufactured parts come into play with Capstone’s long-term service contracts, known as its Factory Protection Plan. The company currently has 264 megawatts of microturbines under long-term contracts, which represent a total of $83.7 million of future service backlog.
"I am extremely pleased with the continuing development of our international aftermarket support capabilities and our entire team of hard-working and dedicated UK IRF employees," CEO Darren Jamison said. "These continuing improvements in both the physical and personnel capabilities at our UK facility are expected to benefit both Capstone and the end-use customer jointly, making it truly a long-term win-win partnership."
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