Clipper Windpower Expands Jobs, Plant As Industry Takes Off

By George C. Ford, The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Jun. 17–CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Working in a plant that previously manufactured large printing presses, Bob Loyd and his team are assembling massive wind turbines in what is developing as a new industry in Iowa.

More than 220 people work at the Clipper Windpower “turbine works,” 4401 Bowling St. SW, up from 12 when Loyd joined the Carpinteria, Calif., company in January 2006.

The 320,000-square-foot plant formerly housed Goss Graphic Systems, which fabricated and assembled printing presses used by The Gazette and many other newspapers in the United States.

“When I came on board, the entire Clipper Windpower company employed between 50 and 60 people,” Loyd said. “Today, the company employs about 450, including employees in Europe, South America and other international locations.”

Loyd said about 170 of the Cedar Rapids plant’s employees are involved in the assembly of 2.5-megawatt Liberty wind turbine nacelles. The units, which contain the generators, rotors and other equipment, are mounted on top of a 300-foot tower.

The remainder of the plant’s employees about 50 are employed in the office.

Clipper initially occupied 50,000 square feet of the Bowling Street plant. In December, it moved into the remainder of the building’s high bays, growing to about 200,000 square feet as wind turbine production began to shift into high gear to meet delivery schedules.

“We recently signed to take over the rest of the building,” Loyd said. “We are grading and paving the perimeter of the plant to provide space for staging turbines prior to shipment.”

The Cedar Rapids plant, which is Clipper Windpower’s only North American wind turbine assembly facility, has been completing one turbine about every two days.

Plans call for increasing the production rate to two turbines every three days this month and a turbine per day by early fall.

The plant’s first eight wind turbines were shipped to Lackawanna, N.Y., on the shores of Lake Erie. UPC Wind, the purchaser, is the developer of the Steel Winds Wind Farm located on the site of a former steel mill.

“Right now, we have some wind turbine units that will be going to Oswego in upstate New York,” Loyd said. “We’re also seeing a lot interest in North and South Dakota, as well as other states in the upper Midwest.

“The country is finally coming to grips with the need to develop alternative sources of power. Wind is just part of the overall portfolio that many utilities are developing to supply their customers’ energy needs.”

Loyd said he expects employment to continue growing at the Cedar Rapids plant even as Clipper Windpower begins developing plants abroad to serve international customers. He said many of the plant’s employees formerly worked at other Cedar Rapids factories.

“We have people who used to work at Goss, FMC, Harnischfeger, Terex and Square D,” he said. “They have the skills that transfer, whether its working with large gears and tight tolerances or understanding what is needed to produce and control electrical power.”

All of the components of the wind turbine nacelle are shipped to Cedar Rapids for testing and final assembly. The plant depends on an international array of suppliers, as well as many component manufacturers in Eastern Iowa.

“That’s one of the many strong points of Iowa,” Loyd said. “John Deere, Rockwell Collins and other companies have developed a good supply base here.

“When you’re producing a turbine a day, as we will be doing this fall, you need dependable suppliers that will get the parts here on time.”

Loyd said Clipper Windpower requires all components to be pre-certified before they are shipped by suppliers to the Cedar Rapids plant. The company employs quality engineers who review production and testing documentation.

“A turbine that is shipped out of here weighs about 140 tons and it takes between eight and nine truckloads to move it to where it will be erected,” Loyd said.

“That means we’re also bringing in about eight to nine truckloads of components per day.”

Most of the Eastern Iowa suppliers that Clipper Windpower is dealing with have long track records, many going back 20 to 25 years. A lot of them supplied Goss with similar components, such as gears and large metal castings.

“This has been a unique opportunity for me,” said Tom Barnes, president of Barnes Manufacturing Services in Marion, which supplies components for the turbines.

“Clipper was a startup company, and I have never been involved with a startup company of this magnitude. This has been a chance of a lifetime to come in and work with engineers on prints and first-run parts.

“We have been able to help them develop the tools and the infrastructure to build their product.”

Loyd, who graduated from Iowa State University and went to work in Cedar Rapids, said Clipper Windpower is feeding a resurgence of heavy manufacturing locally after a major downsizing in the last 25 years.

“It’s really an exciting time to be involved with a whole new industry,” he said. “We have the most diverse work force here that I’ve ever had the chance to work with here in Cedar Rapids.

“We drawing on a younger group of people trained at Kirkwood Community College who understand computers and software. Regardless of where they worked in the last 25 or 30 years, our team is learning new things every day and that makes it a really exciting and challenging experience.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

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