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Mavel: Manufacturing Turbines and Looking Toward 2050
A Mavel turbine being installed at the North Bala hydroelectric project in Ontario, Canada.
H
ydropower firm Mavel was one of the first companies to be founded after the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia. Since then, it has grown from a small hydro engineering company to a world leader in hydroelectric turbine manufacturing. With 180 employees, two production facilities, and 100 proprietary turbine designs, it provides customers around the world with water-to-wire equipment packages. In this interview, Jeanne Hilsinger, the executive chairperson of parent company Mavel, a.s., and the president of its Mavel Americas subsidiary tells Hydro Leader about the company's history and its ambitions to help transform the world's energy mix by 2050.
strategy, and today my roles are executive chairperson of the parent company and president of the Mavel Americas, Inc., subsidiary. Mavel is and always has been managed as a partnership. I am one member of the four-person management board. The other three people are members of the company’s founding team. I’m the only partner without a background in engineering. In fact, I am the only person in a management position in the company without a background in engineering. I was trained as a journalist and then earned my master of business administration degree—not the typical background for a leader of an engineering and manufacturing company.
Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and your position at Mavel.
Hydro Leader: Please tell us about the company’s history.
18 | HYDRO LEADER | September 2020
Jeanne Hilsinger: Mavel was the 176th company registered under the new commercial code of what was then Czechoslovakia after the 1989 fall of communism in the country. Formally registered in Prague in 1990, Mavel was envisioned by a well-known Czech
hydro professor, Dr. František Čihák. The professor brought together three of his best students to form Mavel with the goal of commercializing some of his patents. In 1990, Dr. Čihák would not have expected that his efforts would set the groundwork for a global leader in hydroelectric equipment. Necessity, however, is sometimes the mother of invention. Mavel was not able to secure the manufacturing capability it needed to make Dr. Čihák’s products from existing companies, so it secured manufacturing expertise and capability by leasing a portion of a former rail car repair facility in Benešov, a city about 30 minutes southwest of Prague. Eventually, Mavel bought the entire industrial complex and transformed the manufacturing hall into a state-of-the-art, International Organization for Standardization– certified engineering, research, development, and production center. Simultaneously, Mavel purchased ČKD TurboTechnics, a spinoff of ČKD Blansko Strojírny, which had deep roots in the hydroelectric power business. The location, near the town of Blansko, hydroleadermagazine.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MAVEL.
Jeanne Hilsinger: I first encountered Mavel in 1993 and joined the company in 1995. I have worked full time for Mavel for the past 25 years. I initially served as the company’s chief financial officer and then as its director of marketing and
The interior of the Štvanice hydroelectric project, located on an island in central Prague in the Czech Republic.
