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rench industrial giant Alstom SA says it aims to shift the focus of its energy unit in Indonesia to serve the domestic market, and is seeking to expand its local factory by investing up to US$20 million.

Senior vice president and head of steam and nuclear business at Alstom Andreas Lusch said on Tuesday that the Indonesian government'€™s plan to develop 35,000 megawatt power plants across the country would offer enormous opportunities.

'€œWe'€™re looking for coal-fired and gas-fired [power plant] projects. Coal projects are usually the biggest, as we specialize in high tech, ultra-supercritical and very high capacity power plants,'€ he told reporters after meeting Industry Minister Saleh Husin at the latter'€™s office.

At present Alstom runs a factory in Surabaya, East Java, which makes boilers and heat recovery steam generators. However, the boilers manufactured from the facility have been primarily sold overseas, including to Europe and neighboring countries in Southeast Asia, such as Thailand.

It has, for instance, sold 2x800 megawatt ultra-supercritical boilers to the Netherlands.

Tighter rivalry from Chinese companies in the power generation sector in Indonesia, most often by offering less expensive products, has contributed to the French company'€™s difficulties in maintaining its foothold in the domestic market.

However, with the slowdown in the global market, Alstom'€™s local unit can no longer rely on international power projects, forcing it to search for growth in the Indonesian market.

Lusch added that if Alstom could obtain new projects in Indonesia, the company might expand the capacity of its boiler factory with an investment ranging from $10 million to $20 million.

'€œIf we have a share in new projects, we will invest. It will depend on the volume, but we see these figures as a reasonable investment,'€ he said.

In 2004, Alstom won the tender to build a $268 million coal-fired power plant in Tarahan, Lampung, but last year the Jakarta Corruption Court found the company guilty of giving $423,985 in bribes to legislator Emir Moeis from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) to secure its victory.

At the end of last year, Alstom also pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a record fine of $722 million to the US in a move to end allegations of bribery to win billions of power-plant contracts overseas, including the case in Indonesia.

Alstom Power Energy Systems Indonesia president Maurice Dres said that the firm recently obtained a contract worth $76 million from PT Pertamina Geothermal Energi (PGE) to supply and install a 30 megawatt geothermal plant for the Karaha Power Plant project in West Java. To fulfill the contract, Alstom might need to source a steam turbine and some components from its plant in Poland.

'€œIt may take 23 months for us to complete the contract,'€ he told The Jakarta Post.

Dres further said that the firm had held discussions with PT Medco Energi Internasional on partnering for future power plant projects.

Alstom has had a presence in Indonesia for almost 50 years, providing a wide array of solutions in the area of power and rail transport infrastructure, and employing 1,500 workers. Apart from the boiler factory in Surabaya, Alstom also operates a factory that makes power transformers in Klender, East Jakarta.