Amongst a competitive field Windlab was named Exporter of the Year in the Infrastructure category at a luncheon hosted by the Chief Minister and Canberra Business council on Thursday, September 26, 2013.

This award category recognises outstanding contributions by an Australian company to an international project or projects involving infrastructure, engineering and construction services and/or products.

Windlab’s international business activity has grown markedly over the past 3 years. Today nearly half of all of its employees are based overseas. Windlab’s portfolio of wind energy projects has grown to more than 7,000MW of potential electricity generation on three continents. A significant majority of the more than 50 wind energy projects being developed by Windlab are in international markets.

The award specifically amplifies the success Windlab has enjoyed in Southern African markets over the past year. Windlab projects amount to more than 20% by capacity of all Wind energy projects awarded a 20 year power purchase agreement with the South African government owned utility Eskom, under its international award winning IPP procurement program.

“The acknowledgment provided by this award of Windlab’s achievements demonstrates a number of important points; Australian companies can achieve export success, without shipping minerals or even a physical widget overseas; and as with many of the companies present at these awards, Windlab demonstrates that Australia can produce knowledge based companies that are amongst the best in the world, that can compete in the world’s largest markets against much bigger competitors.” said Mr Roger Price, the Chief Executive Officer of Windlab, in accepting the award.

He continued, “There are two elements to our success; we are succeeding internationally and generating export revenues, which is of course is critically important for both Windlab and the Australian economy. Yet, much of our recent export revenues have come from Africa, where we are helping to deliver electricity to markets and people who today simply don’t have enough electricity of any form. Africa will become the most populous location on earth by 2020 yet today has an electrification rate only a little over 30%. This situation provides a massive opportunity to deliver new electricity generation and simple economics will dictate that most of this demand will be met by renewable energy technologies. So our success is not just a financial success, it’s also about delivering important and successful social outcomes.”

In accepting the award Mr Price thanked the dedicated team at Windlab for their persistence and hard work in growing the company and the ongoing support of its investors in helping to grow the business internationally.