Operation scheduled to start mid-2012 / More than 70 new jobs created

ENERCON is setting up a new logistics hub in Gotha in the central German state of Thuringia. The new centre will support the company’s worldwide service activities. It is currently scheduled to take up operation as early as mid-2012. It will support the logistics centre in Aurich, Germany, that has so far alone been responsible for supplying ENERCON service and installation teams with equipment, materials, and spare parts.

By setting up a second logistics hub, ENERCON Service is responding to ENERCON’s continuing growth. Today, the Service organisation maintains more than 19,000 wind energy converters worldwide. This means that ENERCON’s decentralised Service network is also growing: Today, more than 3,500 service and installation technicians in Germany and abroad depend on timely deliveries of equipment and materials. In the past years, the weekly output of goods at the Service logistics centre in Aurich has almost tripled, and the tendency is growing.

«More wind energy converters, more staff, more materials, and a greater range of turbine types to maintain – all this means more resources are needed for materials logistics,» says project manager Jochen Hilfers on the reasons for setting up a second logistics hub. The new Media contact facility will be built on the well-connected 14-hectare former site of VEB Gummiwerke Thüringen, a now-defunct rubber factory. In the spring, ENERCON will remodel part of the old factory buildings to use for material shipments. The finished facility will also include a returns department and a component repair department.

In addition, ENERCON Service plans to set up a training centre at the new Gotha site over the coming years. It will provide training to service and installation technicians in the areas of wind turbine maintenance, occupational health and safety, and first aid. These activities will at first be using rented premises in Gotha.

By 2013, the Gotha facility will see the creation of more than 55 new jobs in the area of materials management, and more than 20 jobs in the training centre. «Our operations in Thuringia underline once more ENERCON’s commitment to expanding its worldwide decentralised Service network to keep up with growing demand and ensure our customers continue to receive the best-possible service,» says Volker Kendziorra, Managing Director of ENERCON Service Deutschland GmbH.