Tower Tech to supply wind towers to Spain’s Gamesa
From an article by Tom Content in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Manitowoc-based Tower Tech will supply wind towers to the Spanish wind turbine provider Gamesa for wind farms that will be installed in the United States in the second half of the year.
Shares of Tower Tech’s parent company, Broadwind Energy Inc., rose 16% after the announcement Tuesday. The shares gained another 4.6% on Wednesday, closing at $3.38.
The value of the contract wasn’t disclosed. Naperville, Ill.-based Broadwind did not identify which of its three tower factories, located in Manitowoc, Texas and South Dakota, would gain work as a result of the deal.
But the company’s chief operating officer said in a recent interview that the Manitowoc factory was adding work as a result of different contracts with the Danish wind turbine maker Vestas. The plant will soon begin building tall towers for the largest wind farm in Wisconsin, to be built by We Energies. Those towers will also be sold to Vestas, the turbine provider for We Energies’ Glacier Hills Wind Park in Columbia County.
A Broadwind spokesman said the company was in a “quiet period” ahead of its quarterly earnings announcement next month.
Gamesa has been a key customer of Broadwind for the past several years, accounting for more than 10% of total sales in 2008 and 2009, according to filings with securities regulators.
The towers are scheduled for delivery to Gamesa in the last three months of 2010, according to Broadwind.
“Tower Tech specializes in the production of heavier and more complex wind towers, with which turbine manufactures like Gamesa seek to expand the geographic footprint of wind power,” said Jess Collins, group president at Broadwind Energy, in a statement.
