Sub-system
A modern wind turbine blade is over a hundred metres of hollow composite that must survive twenty-five years of reversing loads and rain erosion. They are the largest single-piece composite structures manufactured anywhere, and moving them is a constraint on the entire industry.
In one sentence
A wind turbine blade is a hollow aerofoil built from glass or carbon fibre in a polymer matrix, with internal spar structures carrying the bending loads, bonded together from moulded halves.
Construction is two moulded shells and internal webs, bonded with structural adhesive along the leading and trailing edges. The load-carrying element is a spar cap of unidirectional fibre running the blade's length. Glass fibre is standard; carbon fibre is stiffer and lighter and much more expensive, and is used in spar caps of the largest blades where mass becomes limiting.
Manufacturing remains heavily manual. Fibre is laid into moulds largely by hand, resin is infused under vacuum, and the parts are cured, finished and inspected. That is why blade factories are sited near the projects they serve — the transport problem is severe enough to outweigh labour cost differences.
Onshore blade length is limited by what can travel by road: turning radii, bridge clearances and overhead lines. That constraint has driven segmented blade designs and site-adjacent factories, and it is the main reason offshore turbines are so much larger — a barge has none of those limits.
The tip of a large blade travels at very high speed, and rain droplets at that speed erode the surface. Erosion changes the aerofoil and costs energy, so blades carry protective coatings or tapes that must be inspected and renewed. It is one of the more expensive routine maintenance items on a modern turbine.
Thermoset composites cannot simply be melted and reformed, so retired blades have historically been cut up and landfilled or burned in cement kilns. Recyclable resin systems and mechanical recycling into filler are being commercialised, and disposal regulation is tightening — which makes this a real design consideration rather than an afterthought.
2 of these are marked as a chokepoint: a handful of qualified suppliers, a multi-year lead time, or a single geography.
Fibre production is energy-intensive with concentrated capacity, and carbon fibre in particular is a constrained material.
Composite materialsStructural adhesives and core materials are specialised products, and core supply has been disrupted before.
Composite materialsLayup and finishing are labour-intensive and require training; factory location follows labour availability and transport limits.
Onshore blade length is set by what can be moved by road, so a design is limited by turning radii and bridge clearances rather than by structural engineering.
Other pages in this map that name Blades and composites as something they cannot do without.
What each company supplies at this step, and — where a public figure exists — its share of this specific market — with what that share measures, the period it covers and who published it. Some rows also show the company’s own reported revenue for the segment covering this step, which is a different thing: it says how much this business matters to that company, not how much of the market it holds. Not a ranking and not a recommendation.
Large independent manufacturer of wind turbine blades.
Designs and sources blades for its turbine platforms.
Manufactures blades in-house for its turbines.
Supplies advanced composite materials including carbon fibre reinforcements.
The largest independent blade maker, building to the turbine makers' designs rather than its own; it went through Chapter 11 and out of public ownership in 2025-26.
Builds its own blades, including the single-cast design that changed how offshore blades are made.
Supplies the core materials, resins and blade kits the moulders build around.
Supplies the glass fibre that most of a blade is still made of, cost aside from the carbon spar caps.
Whether recyclable resin systems reach volume production and change end-of-life economics.
Whether carbon fibre supply constrains the largest blade designs.
Whether automation reduces the labour intensity of blade manufacture.
Each page explains one technology in plain language, states what it depends on, and names companies by what they supply at that step. Company roles are described qualitatively and deliberately carry no market shares, revenue figures or rankings — those change faster than an explainer can, and a stale number is worse than none. Ticker links point at company pages on this site and are provided for reference only.
Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or a forecast. A company named on a page about a technology is not thereby a good investment, and the chokepoints described are structural facts about supply chains rather than predictions about prices. Technology moves; where a page describes something as unresolved or in development, that was true when it was written.
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