Posted on Thu, Dec. 10, 2009

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Newton to get wind-energy plant

BY DAN VOORHIS

The Wichita Eagle

Central Kansas has attracted another large wind-energy plant, along with hundreds of new jobs.

Tindall Corp., based in Spartanburg, S.C., announced Wednesday that it will build a $66 million, 150,000- to 2000,000-square-foot plant in Newton.

Construction is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2011. There will be no hiring until closer to that time.

The company expects to employ 200 by the end of its first year of operations and 400 by the end of its third year.

The plant will make pre-cast concrete towers nearly 100 feet tall that can raise the height of wind turbines that the company expects will sell strongly when the wind farm industry revives in the coming years.

The effect of the plant is large, said Mickey Fornaro-Dean, executive director of the Harvey County Economic Development Council.

"This is game-changing," she said. "This is huge. This is the first tenant for our new logistics park. This is a whole new industry, the wind industry. We are terribly excited."

The newly created Kansas Logistics Park is southeast of Newton, within a mile of I-135. It has access to Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe lines through the Watco short-line railroad.

Fornaro-Dean said most of what's in the incentive package isn't being released, yet. But the city has agreed to give Tindall 100 acres in the industrial park and receive $8,000 per acre for another 44 acres. Tindall will provide an earnest payment of $100,000.

Landing the plant took a collaboration of Newton, Harvey County and state governments and their economic development agencies.

The local governments had already started developing the logistics park, said Newton City Manager Randy Riggs, but the call from the state government that a major industry was eyeing Newton pushed everyone into overdrive.

"This has changed the dynamic of the Kansas Logistics Park from 'Build it and they will come,' to 'Hey, let's make sure we're all going the correct direction,' " Riggs said.

Tindall makes pre-cast concrete structures that are for a wide variety of uses, such prisons, industrial cooling towers and schools.

The Newton plant will be the company's largest, said president Willy Lowndes.

He said the company is still in the process of getting patents and certification for the towers, but when it does, he expects the market to be strong.

Steel turbine towers are cost-effective to about 260 feet, he said. After that, the amount of steel needed becomes increasingly expensive. The towers provide a cost-effective way to boost wind towers an extra 100 feet, reducing the amount of steel, and the size of the foundation.

For wind production, taller is better, Lowndes said, because the wind tends to be stronger and more constant at higher altitudes.

Lowndes said he didn't seek out central Kansas because Siemens agreed to build a plant in Hutchinson earlier this year. The two companies picked Kansas for the same reason: wind generating parts are huge and expensive to transport.

"Kansas is in the midst of the wind corridor and all the activity going on," Lowndes said. "You want to manufacture any components as close to the end use as you can get. I'm sure that's what Siemens was thinking."

Tindall looked at a number of cities, including Maize, before choosing Newton.

Reach Dan Voorhis at 316-268-6577 or dvoorhis@wichitaeagle.com.