Among the many highlights of the last few months, the forthcoming international roll-out will be another milestone in VALEMO’s development.
As a long-standing player in mainland France and the French West Indies, we’re about to take another step forward. All of our services are affected by these developments and the challenges they present.
The purpose of this post is to highlight the VALEMO process that is now in place, and how all of our departments are responding to the challenges of this change in order to support our international deployment strategy, from both an administrative and technical point of view with regard to the parks that will be taken over.
Administrative issues:
- Setting up a subsidiary or establishment. Working with the legal department to set up VALEMO’s local subsidiaries.
- Identify with our accounting resources in France the legal requirements of each country and organise ourselves to meet them, in particular by calling on local lawyers and accounting firms.
- Recruit new colleagues locally, ensuring compliance with local and European law.
- Identify and prepare the Offices that will host our colleagues.
- Organise ourselves to manage the day-to-day needs of our employees who will be working remotely: management of expenses, pay slips, holidays, etc.
VALEMO entre actuellement dans deux pays : Finlande et Grèce.
These two new sites are in line with the Valorem Group’s international development strategy, which includes preparing for the first projects currently under construction to come on stream.
| ENERGY | For Finland | For Greece |
| WIND | Commissioning of a 336.3 MW wind farm, comprising 57 NORDEX N163 wind turbines, each with a capacity of 5.9 MW. | Commissioning of a 25.2 MW wind farm, comprising 6 VESTAS V150 turbines, each with an output of 4.2 MW. |
| PV | / | Preparation for acceptance of a XX MW ground-mounted photovoltaic project. |
The challenges of accepting these projects:
- New local environmental and regulatory constraints, which VALEMO France’s teams have studied in depth in order to provide the best possible response to the specific challenges of each project;
- The logistical challenge of transporting human and material resources to the site in order to take delivery of the projects in the best possible conditions, in line with the construction schedule;
- Developing the skills of all our teams in these new machine technologies.
The challenges of operating these projects:
- Welcoming and mastering these new machine technologies;
- Integrating these projects into our 24/7 control centre, by adapting and mastering procedures, particularly emergency procedures, to the specific operations of each country;
- Recruit local operations managers and technical support staff;
- Sharing best practice and knowledge between VALEMO’s feedback and the local skills of the new teams;
- Managing and overcoming language and cultural barriers between France, Finland and Greece: a communication and adaptation challenge that VALEMO’s teams are preparing for and will try to meet as best they can;
- Monitoring regulatory developments in each country, building on the work already done in France.
The challenges for VALEMO’s business development :
- Forging local partnerships in order to secure our long-term foothold and rely on qualified players who are familiar with local issues.
- Making our services available to our customers and colleagues, in particular by taking advantage of our new local presence and, above all, our 24/7 supervision centre.
To ensure the success of these European operations, VALEMO will need to build trusting relationships with local stakeholders, including government authorities, local communities and environmental organisations, building on the work carried out by the VALOREM Group during the project development phases.
Stakeholder consultation and involvement throughout the implementation process is important to identify partners and ensure maximum effectiveness in our operational and technical expert engagements. The extension of our local activities to third-party parks will also be a significant area of development, and we are always available to study and respond to the potential needs of our customers and colleagues, and conversely to listen to and study partners who might be able to meet our needs.
In conclusion, the implementation of these VALOREM projects in Finland and Greece presents VALEMO with significant opportunities for development and skills enhancement in areas that, until now, we have only dealt with on an ad hoc basis. These opportunities also make it possible to create local jobs and contribute to local economic development in our own way, without making this a primary growth objective for VALEMO.
We leave the goal of becoming a European leader to the European leaders, and will humbly try to contribute our know-how in support of the VALOREM strategy, as well as to the parks and customers who could also benefit from our expertise through our proximity and local presence. All of this is part of an overall approach to stabilising our activities, starting in particular by effectively meeting the logistical challenges and new local environmental, social and technical constraints that will soon arise.
