Rolls-Royce Canada

Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC) has made a follow-on investment in industrial gas turbine R&D at Rolls-Royce Canada Ltd (RRC), Montreal, helping the subsidiary of Rolls Royce plc expand its centre of excellence for the product line. TPC will contribute $30 million to the $122.5-million, four-year project, which was approved more than one year ago. In 2000, TPC made an even larger investment — $53.3 million — in a $213.3-million project by RRC’s Energy Business Unit to develop a new line of lower-emission gas turbine engines (R$, July 28/00). That investment allowed the Canadian operations to secure a world product mandate. The latest TPC assistance expands the mandate’s scope to include medium-sized engines in the 25-35 megawatts range. The company claims that the federal investment is helping make RRC and Canada world leaders in the field of high thermal efficiency, low-emission gas turbine engines and will help the firm establish a technology platform for future product lines. RRC will aim its new engines to industries that require distributed power generation and are facing increasingly tough environmental regulations. Potential applications include electricity production, natural gas extraction and pipeline distribution. RRC employs 1,500 people at its Montreal facility, 425 of whom work in the Energy Operations division….