Vestas Production Slows

, December 8, 2009, 8:32am PST | Modified: Tuesday, December 8, 2009, 4:56pm
Vestas plans furloughs at Colorado plantPortland Business Journal


The cyclical nature of manufacturing in the global wind power industry, a cycle that’s been exacerbated by the recession’s credit crunch, will bring “a few long weekends” in the first quarter of 2010 to the 500 employees of the Vestas blade manufacturing plant in Windsor, Colo., said Peter Kruse, the company’s Denmark-based spokesman.

Vestas has its North American headquarters in Portland.

“This industry and Vestas, we have always had a very slow first quarter and what we’re doing in Windsor, we’re not laying off people,” Kruse said. “We’ll try to do the best we can to make sure that they’re training, retooling, helping our service people and what have you.

“We can’t rule out that some will have a few long weekends,” he said.

Kruse said the plant will be temporarily closed for an unknown length of time in the first quarter. The plant, which makes blades for wind turbines, opened in March 2008.

Kruse said activity in the manufacturing sector of the global wind industry typically starts picking up in the second quarter and really gets busy in the third and fourth quarters.

“We’re extremely busy now, but we will slow down in Q1,” he said. “We were busy for Christmas in 2008. We’re busy now, and we’ll be busy next year.”

But Vestas needs more orders for wind turbines on its books to keep the plant fully operational over the next several months, Kruse said.

Orders have fallen due to the year-long pullback in wind farm development that started with the 2008 credit crunch that continued into 2009, Kruse said.

That said, Vestas foresees a strong year of manufacturing in 2011, based on anticipated orders in 2010, he said.

“The 2009 turbines being put in the ground were signed in 2008,” Kruse said. “We see the market coming back. Installation will come back big time in 2011.”

Vestas’ other plants in Colorado — two in Brighton and one in Pueblo — are still under way, but hiring people for the plants and ramping up production in those facilities has been postponed for the time being, Kruse said.

“We have slowed down the people side due to the economic situation in the U.S. We need more orders,” he said.



denvernews@bizjournals.com