Founded in 1985 in Denmark, Nordex Group entered the North American market in 2000 with wind turbines designed to help meet energy needs. Over the years, the company has been at the forefront of innovation in its industry, leading the mass production of 1 MW turbines starting in 1995, becoming the first to produce 2.5 MW turbines in 2000, and making the first 4+ MW turbine in 2017. With a production facility and training center in West Branch, Iowa, to support its headquarters in Chicago, Illinois, the company has grown to a 5-MW product portfolio in the U.S.
What is now Nordex’s West Branch location began as a manufacturing plant for Acciona’s wind turbine manufacturing subsidiary, Acciona Windpower. The company decided to develop its first wind turbine manufacturing plant in the U.S. in 2007, after it received exclusive rights to develop 1300 MW of wind projects in Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin. It invested $23 million to repurpose an existing 100,000-square-foot facility in West Branch, which had been built for the hydraulics company Sauer-Danfoss in 1997, but the company vacated the space by 2003. “Knowing that ground-up construction of a new facility couldn’t be completed in time to meet their aggressive operations goal, Acciona selected to modify this facility because it had existing office space and space for parts storage,” commented Jim Kiesey, a senior project manager at developer Ryan Companies, about Acciona’s desired timeline to reach operational status within seven months. The company also added 101,200 square feet of space to house the assembly process, ultimately creating more than 100 local jobs.
However, the tides began to turn within a few years. Despite increasing hiring and raising its production goal in 2008, the following year, Acciona Windpower announced it would lay off 58 people, including assembly workers and production support employees, representing about a one-third cut of the workforce at the Iowa wind turbine plant. The company decided to “scale the workforce to the current demand for wind turbines, which is uncharacteristically low due primarily to instability in the financing markets,” with many customers postponing their orders until the following year. In April 2013, Acciona Windpower announced that it was eliminating 40 more jobs, pointing to the fact that “U.S. wind development declined sharply over the past year for reasons beyond our control.” The company ultimately paused operations at the site, and the plant sat idle for 12 years.
Photo Courtesy Nordex North America…