From March 8-10, 2023, the Wind Energy Asia 2023 (WEA) took place in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The WEA is the main wind energy B2B trading platform for Taiwan and brings together overseas and domestic players to help Taiwan in developing and building an entire supply chain for the wind energy industry. 

Since the very beginning of the Wind Energy Asia in 2019, Holland Home of Wind Energy (HHWE) participated in all editions, except for the one year COVID-19 hiatus in 2021, and also this year we were present with a Netherlands Lounge. This was the last activity in the framework of the Partners for International Business (PIB) Offshore Wind Taiwan, which started in April 2018 and did run for 5 years in total, and covered participation in both the Wind Energy Asia and the Taiwan Energy Forum each year, besides organizing multiple inbound- and outbound trade missions to Taiwan and the Netherlands, with as goal to further improve the knowledge sharing between the two countries (on both private and public level), promote cooperation and expand the network.

Back to 2023: the Netherlands Lounge was located next to the main entrance and covered a total floorspace of 72sqm. In total 12 companies participated in the Lounge as co-exhibitors:

1. Ampelmann Operations
2. CAPE Holland
3. Fugro IOVTEC
4. Geomil Equipment
5. GustoMSC – NOV
6. Huisman
7. IX Wind
8. RelyOn Nutec
9. SMST
10. TNO
11. TWD
12. WIND Cable Services

The exhibition days gave the opportunity to our co-exhibitors to expand their existing network, establish new contacts and meet with (potential) clients. Some postshow numbers:

• 124 key players from 15 countries participated as exhibitors, with pavilions from the Netherlands, Norway, UK, Denmark and France; and
• 3,729 in-person visitors (40% increase in comparison with 2022) from  44 countries.

Although the WEA is the only exhibition in Taiwan with main focus on wind energy, the exhibition and amount of visitors is relatively small, but the quality of the visitors is great, with the right people being there to further discuss cooperation and possible leads.

After the three exhibition days, as final conclusion of the PIB Taiwan, HHWE, together with the Netherlands Office Taipei (NLOT), hosted the Taichung Orange Business Lounge, a business and networking reception bringing two strenghts of the Netherlands together: offshore wind, celebrating the successful visit of the offshore wind delegation from the Netherlands during the exhibition, and the baseball game of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, as part of the World Baseball Classics 2023 between Taiwan and the Netherlands.
Before the start of the baseball game, Representative NLOT Guido Tielman noted that the Dutch offshore wind sector in Taiwan has an outstanding project portfolio of more than 1.1 bilion euros. Deputy Mayor of Taichung Alicia Wang mentioned that windpower has already become one of the most renewable energy sources in Taichung and looks forward to the further cooperation between Taichung and the Netherlands.

To further build on the success of previous years and the position of the Dutch wind sector in Taiwan, we will also organize activities in Taiwan in the future, with the Energy Taiwan Forum taking place in October 2023.