German wind turbine maker to build first U.S. plant in Iowa
Posted: Friday, August 18, 2006
DES MOINES (AP) -- Rapid growth in the wind turbine business has prompted German manufacturer Siemens AG to build its first U.S. manufacturing plant in Iowa.
Munich-based Siemens Power Generation said Thursday it will buy a shuttered truck trailer factory in Fort Madison, a Mississippi River community located 135 miles southeast of Des Moines.
The property includes a 224,000-square-foot building complex on 127 acres. The closing date for the purchase is expected in a few weeks.
The Iowa site was chosen because its close proximity to water, rail and road transportation, and its central location in the United States makes it is ideal for wind turbine blade manufacturing, where logistics are critically important due to the massive size of the blades, the company said.
The company also was provided a financial aid package that included $1.6 million in forgivable loans and $880,288 in tax breaks from the state, said Tina Hoffman, deputy director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development.
Southeastern Community College offered $1.9 million in training funds for employees and the city of Fort Madison provided $1.97 million from Tax Increment Finance funds, Hoffman said.
The trailer factory, which closed in 2001, will be upgraded and expanded. The first blades to be manufactured at Fort Madison will be for the company's 2.3 megawatt wind turbines. The blades measure 150 feet long, half the length of a football field.
A patented technology developed by Siemens casts the blades in one piece in a single step from glass-fiber-reinforced epoxy resin. Production of the rotor blades is scheduled to start in the first half of 2007.
Siemens will employ 250 people, the company said in a statement. Employment recruiting will begin immediately and continue through the end of the year and will include management, administrative and technical support personnel in addition to about 200 production and maintenance workers.
The new jobs provide a boost to the southeast corner of the state, where factory closings in recent years have left thousands of workers without jobs.
The property Siemens is buying was owned by truck trailer manufacturer Wabash National Corp., which closed the plant in 2001. More than 500 employees had once worked at the plant.
The unemployment rate in Lee County was 5.7 percent in June, higher than the state average rate of 3.6 percent and the national unemployment rate of 4.6 percent, said Iowa Workforce Development.
Siemens Power Generation CEO Randy Zwirn said in a statement that the company's wind turbine blade manufacturing production has been growing since 2004 when it expanded an existing plant and opened an additional factory in Denmark.
"By expanding our wind power manufacturing capacity into the U.S., we will substantially increase our ability to competitively serve this important market, which is projected to triple by the year 2020," he said.
The company said it received new orders totaling nearly $14 billion in fiscal year 2005, which ended Sept. 30. It posted sales of $10.4 billion during the year.
The Department of Energy has established a goal of obtaining 6 percent of the nation's electricity from wind by 2020. Last year, only 0.36 percent of the nation's electricity production came from wind energy, said DOE spokeswoman Louise Guey-Lee.
Iowa has nearly 900 wind turbines capable of producing 836 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 226,000 average homes, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Planned projects would add another 120 turbines capable of generating an additional 249 megawatts of electricity, the group said.
That ranks Iowa third in the nation behind Texas, which has 2,400 megawatts of wind energy installed and California with 2,323 megawatts.
Munich-based Siemens Power Generation said Thursday it will buy a shuttered truck trailer factory in Fort Madison, a Mississippi River community located 135 miles southeast of Des Moines.
The property includes a 224,000-square-foot building complex on 127 acres. The closing date for the purchase is expected in a few weeks.
The Iowa site was chosen because its close proximity to water, rail and road transportation, and its central location in the United States makes it is ideal for wind turbine blade manufacturing, where logistics are critically important due to the massive size of the blades, the company said.
The company also was provided a financial aid package that included $1.6 million in forgivable loans and $880,288 in tax breaks from the state, said Tina Hoffman, deputy director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development.
Southeastern Community College offered $1.9 million in training funds for employees and the city of Fort Madison provided $1.97 million from Tax Increment Finance funds, Hoffman said.
The trailer factory, which closed in 2001, will be upgraded and expanded. The first blades to be manufactured at Fort Madison will be for the company's 2.3 megawatt wind turbines. The blades measure 150 feet long, half the length of a football field.
A patented technology developed by Siemens casts the blades in one piece in a single step from glass-fiber-reinforced epoxy resin. Production of the rotor blades is scheduled to start in the first half of 2007.
Siemens will employ 250 people, the company said in a statement. Employment recruiting will begin immediately and continue through the end of the year and will include management, administrative and technical support personnel in addition to about 200 production and maintenance workers.
The new jobs provide a boost to the southeast corner of the state, where factory closings in recent years have left thousands of workers without jobs.
The property Siemens is buying was owned by truck trailer manufacturer Wabash National Corp., which closed the plant in 2001. More than 500 employees had once worked at the plant.
The unemployment rate in Lee County was 5.7 percent in June, higher than the state average rate of 3.6 percent and the national unemployment rate of 4.6 percent, said Iowa Workforce Development.
Siemens Power Generation CEO Randy Zwirn said in a statement that the company's wind turbine blade manufacturing production has been growing since 2004 when it expanded an existing plant and opened an additional factory in Denmark.
"By expanding our wind power manufacturing capacity into the U.S., we will substantially increase our ability to competitively serve this important market, which is projected to triple by the year 2020," he said.
The company said it received new orders totaling nearly $14 billion in fiscal year 2005, which ended Sept. 30. It posted sales of $10.4 billion during the year.
The Department of Energy has established a goal of obtaining 6 percent of the nation's electricity from wind by 2020. Last year, only 0.36 percent of the nation's electricity production came from wind energy, said DOE spokeswoman Louise Guey-Lee.
Iowa has nearly 900 wind turbines capable of producing 836 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 226,000 average homes, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Planned projects would add another 120 turbines capable of generating an additional 249 megawatts of electricity, the group said.
That ranks Iowa third in the nation behind Texas, which has 2,400 megawatts of wind energy installed and California with 2,323 megawatts.
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