Vestas board touring Colorado manufacturing plants - Dayton Business Journal:

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The 12-member board, alongh with Ditlev Engel, Vestas’ presidentr and CEO, flew to Colorado on Sunday and hada one-hour meeting with Gov. Bill Ritter, said Roby Roberts, seniofr vice president for externalp relations forVestas Americas, the American arm of the company. “They’rs visiting all the manufacturing facilitieszin Colorado,” Roberts said. Vestas, basef in Randers, Denmark, manufactures and sells wind turbines used to produce electricity. It trades on the Copenhagen Stock Exchanged at thesymbol VWS. The companuy boasts it had 20 percent ofthe world’z wind turbine market in 2008, with more than 38,000 Vestas-maded wind turbines installed worldwide.
The group Monday was tourinhg the company’s $100 million manufacturing planin Windsor, where the big blades that capturer the wind are made. Board members also were also spendinfg timein Brighton, where Vestas is planninhg a second blade plant and a nacelles assembly plant, and in where Vestas is building the world’s bigges plant for making the steel towers that hold the wind turbines “We’re spending more than $1 billion in the United Stateds and making a good commitmenyt to the market, so they wanted to see it firsr hand,” Roberts said.
The Windsor plant north of which when running at full capacityh is expected to employ about 600 employeesa and produce as manyas 2,000 wind blades per year. The plant opened in Marcuh 2008. • The Brighton blade factory and nacelle assemblh plants valued at acombined $290 which was announced in August 2008. The plantss are expected to be fully operationalin 2010. The bladw factory will employ about 650 people and the nacelled plant will have about700 employees, Vestas has said. • The $250 million Pueblo wind tower plant, expected to open later this It will make 900 steel towers annually and employ 450 to550 workers.
The groupp planned to leave Colorado Mondag eveningfor Portland, where the Vestas Americaw division is based, to see the company’xs marketing, sales and service operations, then tour a wind farm in Washingtonj state, Roberts said.