September 13, 2011
News Release
EVANSVILLE, Ind. (Sept. 13, 2011) – Governor Mitch Daniels joined executives from GBT USA, Inc., a designer and manufacturer of wind turbine blades, today to announce the company’s plans to open a facility here and create up to 400 new jobs by 2014 in southern Indiana.
The clean technology company, a subsidiary of Global Blade Technology, will lease and equip 45,000 square feet of space at Park41. The new office and manufacturing facility will house the company’s engineering design and consultancy offices and the production lines of wind blades, molds and tooling. In 2013, the company plans to build an additional facility in southern Indiana to manufacture composite rotor blades for wind turbine generators. The company projects to invest $17.6 million for leasing, construction and equipment costs at the two facilities.
“Indiana has been the nation’s fastest-growing wind power state, and it is now being reflected in the arrival of great supplier companies like GBT,†said Daniels. “We are thrilled to have earned the business of this outstanding international company.â€
According to the American Wind Energy Association, Indiana increased its installed wind capacity ten-fold in 2009 and 2010, becoming one of the fastest growing states for wind power. With 2.4 percent of the state’s power provided by wind last year, Indiana is ranked 12th in the country for most installed wind power capacity, all of it in the last few years. It is estimated that the wind power industry created up to 2,000 direct and indirect jobs in the Hoosier state in 2010.
GBT USA plans to hire additional personnel in southern Indiana in phases with 40 new employees by 2012 and up to 400 cumulative positions filled by 2014. The new associates will be across the company, including manufacturing, engineering, logistics and customer service.
“GBT is capitalizing on an underserved segment of the wind energy market,†said Dan Oberle, general manager of GBT USA. “Evansville is an ideal location to serve the industry as it is centrally located to the massive wind farms of the Midwest and the flurry of offshore activity to the east and south.â€
Founded in 2009, Global Blade Technology is headquartered in Wieringerwerf, Netherlands, with operations in India and the United States. GBT USA was incorporated in 2009 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and focuses on designing and producing custom rotor blades for wind turbine generators for customers around the world.
The Indiana Economic Development Corporation offered GBT USA, Inc. up to $2,800,000 in performance-based tax credits and up to $200,000 in training grants based on the company’s job creation plans. The city of Evansville is receiving a federal Community Development Block Grant from the state’s Office of Community and Rural Affairs for purchase of capital equipment for the firm’s new Evansville operations. Also, the city of Evansville is offering the company a 10-year Evansville Urban Enterprise Zone Investment Deduction and a loan through the Evansville Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) which is expected to be approved by the Evansville RLF Board later today.
“Once again, our diligence, collaboration, workforce development, and preparation have paid off,†said Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel. “Evansville had the right facility in the right location with the right infrastructure and amenities – and collaborated with the State to offer the right set of economic incentives – to entice GBT USA to establish its first U.S. manufacturing facility right here in Evansville.â€
Green jobs account for 1.7 percent of the state’s total employment, according to a survey by the Indiana Business Research Center and the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. In June, Fronius, an Austrian clean technology company and fourth-largest solar inverter producer in the world, announced that it will relocate its North American headquarters from Michigan to Portage, creating up to 512 new jobs by 2016.
About GBT
Global Blade Technology (GBT) is an engineering company focused on wind rotor blades, including design, tooling, and manufacturing technology. GBT does fundamental process and materials research, mold production and advanced blade manufacturing systems. GBT was incorporated in the Netherlands in 2009, and boasts over 70 years of collective blade technology experience. The company is headquartered in Wieringerwerf, Netherlands, with operations in Vadodara, India, and Cincinnati, Ohio.
About IEDC
Created by Governor Mitch Daniels in 2005 to replace the former Department of Commerce, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation is governed by a 12-member board chaired by Governor Daniels. Mitch Roob serves as the chief executive officer of the IEDC. For more information about IEDC, visit www.iedc.in.gov.
Source: Indiana Economic Development Corp.
Congrats to Kunkel, the Mayor, and the Governor! Retrofitting an old factory. Attracting a green industry. JOBS!
While this is great news…..I hope someone told them the city isn’t windmill friendly and that if they want to erect one on site they will need a zoning variance….or will they get a pass since they are creating jobs?
Still kudos to all involved.
JMHO
I don’t think the zoning board will be the determining factor in this case, blanger. Since the airport is directly adjacent to the Whirlpool plant, it will be the FAA regulations that apply to the location and height of any windmill located on that property.
LOL…you think? 🙂 A couple red flashy lights on top should be enough for the FAA, hey! and it could be self-powering as long as it’s pointed towards downtown.
JMHO
No I am not kidding. It will be the FAA that says yeah or nay to a windmill located on the Whirlpoop property. But if the FAA were not in the picture, windmills in Vanderburgh County currently are regulated same as cell towers, and that means the required separation between a windmill and the closest residential dwelling is determined by the height of the windmill or cell tower. So, in the case of the Whirlpool location, with no residences nearby, without the airport across St. George Road, it would’ve been a given.
It was a joke son…..hence the LOL and the 🙂
There is no reason to believe that there will be any windmill in the old Whirlpool building. This business just makes the blades. No red lights, no annoying noises, and no need for FAA to be worried as long as all that happens goes on inside.
LOL….just having a little fun with ya… 🙂
Courier list 40 jobs, which is it?
40 now with a possibility of 400 later.
For those of you who might have wondered how using public tax dollars to attract private industry jobs ever got started, you may find thye following informative. It even has an Indiana connection.
This excerpt is from an in-depth Time Magazine article on corporate welfare that appeared in 1998.
Corporate welfare has taken place under all political parties, and in fact is responsible for the rise in PAC funds pouring into elections and the resulting in-balance between individual donations versus corporate political donations.
The Time article says this is how it all started:
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Durant, Mississippi: Where It All Began
In 1936, in the midst of the great depression, Mississippi fired the first shot in what is now an internecine, multibillion-dollar battle for jobs among the states. The idea was simple enough: lure businesses from the North with offers of cheap and abundant nonunion labor, low-priced land, minimal taxes and, for the first time, state-sponsored, tax-exempt industrial-revenue bonds. In other words, a coordinated effort to raid other states for their corporations.
The first beneficiary was Real Silk Hosiery Mills Inc. The company, based in Indianapolis, Ind., employed 4,000 knitting-machine operators who turned out half a million pairs of hosiery weekly, which were peddled door to door across the nation by 11,000 sales reps. Hurt first by the Depression and then by a bitter strike in 1934, Real Silk was working its way back to solvency in 1936 when Mississippi came calling.
The town of Durant (pop. 2,500), a farming community with more sidewalks than paved streets, was offering to issue $25,000 in industrial-revenue bonds to buy land and erect a 15,000-sq.-ft. building, which it would lease to Real Silk for 25 years for all of $5 a year. In addition, Durant would waive five years of county taxes on the building and property taxes on the machinery. On top of that, the city would provide insurance, set up a training school and even erect housing for workers. In a front-page editorial that sounds eerily familiar, the Durant News crowed that the project was a great deal for the town. In a special election, the town’s voters approved the bond issue, 330 to 19. The people of Durant were in the hosiery business.
At least for a while. Indeed, nine years later, in December 1946, Durant’s citizens approved a second bond issue of $60,000 to expand the plant. At its peak, the Durant factory employed about 150 people. They worked three shifts daily, turning out 84,000 pairs of hosiery each week.
By the mid ’50s, all that came to an end. Before the first bond was due to be paid off, Real Silk shut all its factories, including Durant, sold off the equipment and became an investment company. The lesson, one that has been lost on generations of mayors, Governors and Presidents, is that capital ultimately ignores such incentives. It seeks its highest reward as dictated by market forces, not political ones. The building that was to put Durant on the industrial map still stands–empty.
And Mississippi? It was the poorest state in the nation when its corporate-welfare program began in 1936. Today, 62 years and hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars in economic incentives later, it remains dead last in per capita income.
from TIME Magazine, 1998-Nov-9, by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, with reporting by Laura Karmatz and Aisha Labi, and research by Joan Levinstein
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To provide some geographic perspective, Durant is only a handful of miles north of Canton, the birthplace of that great fraud, Oprah Winfrey…
I would like for our city to keep this going down 41 and old 41. Thoughts?….
http://evansvillemovingforward.blogspot.com/2011/09/commissioner-winneckes-tech-park-good.html
“Green Jobs” wow..just like Solyndra…You know that solar panel company that was given millions of tax dollars and a short time later went belly up while at the same time lining the pockets of Obamas cronies??
Am I the only one skeptical of this little operation?
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