Rejecting Mingyang UK wind turbine factory would be to indulge in a fantasy

The offshore wind supply chain is a locomotive; I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it until someone listens.

Ports and infrastructure are the locomotive. Policy is the track. Pipeline momentum is the fuel. And every carriage represents a tier in the supply chain; from foundations to blades to service vessels and so on.

When the train runs smoothly, the whole project or energy transition moves. When it doesn’t, you can trace the problem to one of those four elements being missing or misaligned.

Right now, Scotland has the engine ready at Ardersier Port, one of the few places in the UK with the depth, acreage and ambition to anchor the next industrial phase of offshore wind.

The question now facing Westminster is whether it’s prepared to couple up a very large carriage; Mingyang.

The opportunity… and the test

Mingyang has announced plans to invest up to £1.5bn ($2bn) in a three-phase project at Ardersier Port, with the first phase targeting 1,500 jobs and production by late 2028.

The site would be the UK’s largest, and first fully integrated, wind turbine manufacturing facility, subject to final UK government approval; feeding not just the UK but ideally European and global projects.

If built, this would surpass Siemens Gamesa’s Hull blade facility, which currently employs around 1,300 people and produces blades for major UK offshore wind projects, but does not manufacture full turbines or nacelles.

This would be a physical signal that the country is serious about rebuilding its energy supply chain, not just installing other people’s manufactured equipment and technology.

But the proposal has landed at an awkward time. In a long-running trade dispute with China, Trump last week announced a new 100% tariff on all Chinese imports, including wind turbines. That was in retaliation for China’s export controls on rare earth minerals, escalating the trade war and putting further pressure on US allies to restrict Chinese investment in critical infrastructure.

And the UK, still struggling to define a coherent industrial policy, let alone still navigating a totally different global trading environment following the self-harm of Brexit, now finds itself in a geopolitical tug-of-war; a train caught between two stations.

The political squeeze

The decision, formally to be taken under the National Security and Investment Act, sits squarely with Westminster. Scotland can lobby, build and prepare the ground, but it can’t sign the ticket.

On one side, the US is leaning heavily, citing national security risks and pressing for consistency with its own protectionist stance.

On the other, the UK has binding climate and energy goals: a decarbonised power sector by 2030 and a need to unlock over 40 GW of Scottish offshore wind, much of it floating and still waiting for a domestic manufacturing base to make it real.

Refuse Mingyang and the UK pleases Washington but undermines its own strategy. Approve it unconditionally and the headlines write themselves: “Britain hands energy infrastructure to China.”

The government is caught between sovereignty optics and supply-chain reality.

The engineering reality

Here’s the part too many politicians (and journalists) gloss over: the technical risks around Chinese turbine technology, data access, cyber intrusion, or remote control, are not unique, and they are manageable.

Critical infrastructure everywhere uses layered defence: Separate operational networks, one-way data diodes, third-party SCADA, and UK-based monitoring centres.

Firmware can be signed, updates quarantined, and access ring-fenced and time-limited. These aren’t speculative ideas; they’re already deployed in nuclear, aviation, and defence sectors.

You can engineer out risk far more effectively than you can legislate away global supply interdependence.

Rejecting a UK factory won’t remove Chinese content from turbines, it’ll just ensure those turbines are built elsewhere and imported at higher cost, with less transparency and no domestic oversight.

If we can secure a nuclear plant, we can secure a turbine factory.

The Industrial Reality

While everyone argues about security, the real issue is industrial, and we’re losing that one.

No European OEM is building a new turbine factory in the UK. Siemens Gamesa has expanded its Hull blade plant, welcome, but incremental. Vestas is talking about a blade facility in Leith, yet it remains conditional, and it has just scaled back its Isle of Wight operation. Call it a product transition if you like; it’s still a reduction.

No one is breaking ground on nacelle or full wind turbine generator assembly in Scotland. Yet developers are already paying option lease fees to the Crown Estate for projects that may not have a single turbine supplier in sight.

European OEMs are at full stretch; some won’t even enter dialogue with specific projects. So developers keep spending on seabed leases and early works while the hardware pipeline remains blank.

What’s the alternative, refund the Treasury because Europe can’t deliver?

If we’re happy to see Chinese turbines installed anyway to keep those projects alive, then the question is simple: do we import the value or build it here?

Jobs, training, port activity; all on the table, all waiting for a decision. This isn’t ideology; it’s logistics, economics and credibility.

So if not Mingyang, then who, and when?

The UK can’t keep preaching “supply-chain sovereignty” while watching ships unload foreign-built turbines. Even the government’s Offshore Wind Industrial Growth Plan last year admits the UK must triple domestic manufacturing by 2035 but lacks the policy stability to trigger that investment.

Right now, Mingyang is the only OEM standing at the gate with shovels ready. That’s not a risk; that’s a test, of whether Britain still knows how to act strategically, not sentimentally.

And let’s be honest: there’s no such thing as a “purely European” turbine. Every OEM already sources magnets, bearings and castings from China. The laptops in UK government meetings, the iPhones in every minister’s pocket, all born of the same global supply chain.

Tim Cook once said it isn’t just about cost; it’s about scale and skill density. The West simply doesn’t have enough engineers on the factory floor to compete at volume.

So let’s drop the fantasy that we can firewall ourselves from Chinese manufacturing. The question isn’t whether we use Chinese technology, we already do.

The real question is where the value lands. Do we capture the industrial benefit of it here, or watch others do it while we sermonise about sovereignty from the sidelines?

The UK government’s recent experience of being forced to take back control of British Steel from Chinese owner Jingye, which had threatened to shut down blast furnaces, is however a cautionary tale. Foreign ownership of critical infrastructure must be subject to enforceable local content, governance, and operational requirements.

If not, the host country can be left exposed if the investor’s priorities shift.

The risk calculus

So yes there are real risks. The first is security, that sensitive data could be accessed or manipulated. The second is strategic dependency, where supply chains tilt too far toward one country. The third is political credibility: appearing naive in a new era of great-power rivalry.

But the other side of the equation is just as real:

The security risk can be designed out. The industrial risk cannot.

How to move forward

This isn’t charity; it’s industrial realism. The British Steel experience shows that promises alone are not enough. Any approval for Mingyang at Ardersier must be conditional on enforceable local content, transparent governance, and clear government oversight; with real consequences if commitments are not met.

This is not about singling out Chinese investors, but about learning from recent history and protecting the UK’s strategic interests.

It lets the UK hold the rulebook and write the conditions, not watch from the platform while the train leaves.

The verdict

The UK government is standing on the platform with the Mingyang carriage waiting in front of it.

Behind stretches a long line of opportunity; ScotWind (and Celtic Sea), floating wind, energy independence. Ahead, two diverging tracks: one toward managed engagement and industrial renewal, the other toward managed decline and dependence on imports.

Ardersier is the engine. Mingyang is the carriage. The UK must decide whether to couple them carefully and move forward, or let someone else build the train.