Nordex beaks ground on Arkansas wind-turbine plant

Hamburg, Germany-based Nordex (ETR:NDX1) broke ground on a $100 million factory for utility-scale wind turbines in Jonesboro, Ark.

Initial production is expected to start in mid-2010 in order to fulfill orders in what subsidiary Nordex USA said today is the world's fastest growing market for wind, the United States. Nordex plans to produce up to 300 wind turbines a year by 2014, at which time the factory is expected to employ 700.

"We are positioning ourselves for the market surge around the corner," said Ralf Sigrist, CEO of Nordex USA, in a news release. "We are absolutely confident that the U.S. wind market will be the biggest in the world."

The project has two components: a $40 million nacelle assembly plant with 115,000 square feet of production space, and a $60 million rotor blade facility expected to begin production in late 2012. Both are expected to be powered by geothermal energy.

The factory in the Craighead Technology Park is planned to produce one of the largest classes of wind turbines, the 2.5-megawatt N90 and N100. Nordex built its first turbine this large in 2000.

The parent company attributes much of its profit growth in recent months to the U.S. market. The U.S. accounted for 12 percent of the company's global sales in the first half of 2009, up from roughly one percent in the same period the previous year. European sales have held steady at about 80 percent (see Nordex gets 185MW Italian wind order).

Last month the company said it had €791 million in firm orders on its order books.

"I repeatedly sense that nowhere is the renewable energy vision stronger than in the United States," said Thomas Richterich, CEO of the parent Nordex.

Nordex recently completed a 62.5-MW wind farm in Pennsylvania.

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