The Switch to acquire Wärtsilä Drives’ products

The Switch, a Yaskawa company, is to acquire Wärtsilä Drives’ products, R&D and manufacturing to strengthen its core advanced electrical drive train offering. 

The Yaskawa-backed investment gives The Switch a stronger foothold in its growing marine business area. Together, The Switch and the Norway-based marine drives business aim to benefit from a number of inherent added-value synergies, including a stronger machine and drive package offering, a broader product range and wider market access. 

As part of the deal, The Switch will gain part of Wärtsilä’s Electrical & Automation (E&A) business line’s test center and the manufacturing facilities in Stord, Norway, that are associated with its marine drives. The Switch will then become a supply chain partner of Wärtsilä for marine drives while also being able to open up the product offering to other customers. The business transition from Wärtsilä to The Switch is due for completion once the operations have been transferred to The Switch.

The Switch investment in the marine drives business enables both companies to fully focus on developing their core competences and creating drive train solutions with better synergy together. Wärtsilä aims to focus on systems, whereas The Switch strives to be the best in providing drive train components to future-proof vessels.

The specialised marine R&D teams of the synergetic group will collaborate closely, enabling The Switch and Yaskawa to bring additional technical resources to ongoing and future solutions. Additionally, the two will be able to take advantage of building on each other’s solid technical knowledge.

 “The Wärtsilä drive products are specially made without compromise for marine applications. These products are ready for integration with various other systems because of their superior communication features, including de facto industry standard interfaces and remote management possibilities. It is also possible to separate the logistics for cabinets and power modules by shipping them later to avoid damage during the long installation time at shipyards,” says The Switch president and chief executive Jukka-Pekka Mäkinen.