Aggreko signs Japanese power deal

A British firm today said it had signed a deal with the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan to supply emergency power.

Glasgow-based Aggreko will supply 200 megawatts of both gas and diesel-fired power to Tokyo Electric Power Company Incorporated (Tepco) for a minimum one-year term from June.

The power plants will be installed at sites in the Tokyo Bay area and will help sustain the electricity supply to consumers and businesses hit by last month's devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Aggreko's international power arm serves utilities, governments, armed forces and major industrial customers with power plants ranging from 10MW to 100MW on a single site.

Rupert Soames, Aggreko chief executive, said: "Within a few days of the disaster, Aggreko entered into discussions with Tepco to bring additional power to the grid.

"Tepco has moved extremely fast and with great professionalism to define an engineering solution which will bring additional generating capacity to Japan. Aggreko is pleased it is able to be of assistance to the country at this very difficult time."

The company has already started to move the power generation equipment to the stricken country.

Aggreko, which supplied power to the Vancouver Winter Olympics, FIFA World Cup and the Asian Games in Guangzhou, would not reveal the value of the contract but shares added more than 3% following the announcement.

Caroline de La Soujeole, support services research analyst at Seymour Pierce Research, said: "Aggreko enjoys a market leading position and has the global scale and flexibility to respond quickly to emergency needs."

Tepco is battling to contain the spread of radiation from the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, north of Tokyo.

Radioactivity has spewed from the plant since March 11, when a 9.0-magnitude earthquake spawned a massive tsunami which decimated large swathes of Japan's north-eastern coast.

Up to 25,000 people are believed to have died in the disaster, and tens of thousands lost their homes. Thousands more were forced to flee a 12-mile radius around the plant because of the radiation.