Siemens expansion powers southeast Iowa

Eighteen-month-old manufacturing facility undergoing $33 million expansion; 287 new jobs to be created

A highly skilled and available workforce, a central U.S. location and supportive local and state governments—those were the overriding factors when Siemens Power Generation selected the southeast Iowa community of Fort Madison for its wind turbine manufacturing facility a year and a half ago.

And according Mike Revak, Siemens PG’s director of wind power in the Americas, those same reasons are why—after only 18 short months—the company is in the midst of a $33-million expansion project that will result in the addition of 287 new jobs. “We looked from Texas to the Canadian border,” says Revak. “We feel it’s the best solution for us to expand at our existing facility in Iowa.”

The Iowa Department of Economic Development helped leverage the expansion with a $1.6 million award from the Economic Development Set-Aside (EDSA) program and tax incentives from its High Quality Jobs Creation (HQJC) program.

When the company began production of its massive 12-ton, 148-foot-long wind turbine blades in fall 2007, Siemens was looking to grow its overall capacity. “While wind power represents just one percent of U.S. electricity generation, market forces could grow that figure to 20 percent in just 12 years.”

Those forces include tax incentives for “green” energy, state mandates requiring electricity providers to obtain a percentage of their power from renewable sources, consumers demanding renewable energy and the volatility of fossil fuel prices.

Siemens PG’s 311,000-square-foot facility, which currently employs 254 Iowans, sits on a 126-acre parcel, giving the company ample room to pursue its expansion needs. Revak says the company’s three-year expansion project will add 75,000 square feet to its existing building, construct a second 125,000-square-foot plant and establish a rail yard. Doubling the size of the workforce will occur over three years as well.
“We’ve been very successful in finding the right kind of worker and there are a lot of the right people in southeast Iowa,” says Revak.