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Area Development - Site Selection, Facility Planning and Workforce Development

Dutch Wind Turbine Firm to Open First U.S. Facility in Indiana

09/14/2011
Global Blade Technology (GBT), a Dutch designer and manufacturer of the wind turbine blades, has announced Evansville, IN, will be the site of its first U.S. facility. It expects to employ 40 workers in the coming year, and start a manufacturing facility in the region by 2014 with possibly 400 total employees.

GBT will lease and equip part of a former Whirlpool refrigerator plant to make wind blades, molds and tooling. "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," said Dan Oberle, general manager of GBT USA.

Evansville officials have been working to transform the factory site into an industrial park to replace 1,100 jobs lost when Whirlpool shut down the plant and moved its work to Mexico.

Nearly half of the factory is currently occupied by businesses with about 200 workers, said a spokesman for the development firm that bought the plant this year.

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