Friday, February 6, 2009

Frequently Asked Questions ..... 1-3

I'm sure that this will become an ever- expanding list of questions but, here are the top three so far:

  1. When will Great Lakes Towers start hiring?
  2. When will Great Lakes Towers begin construction?
  3. Can I buy stock in Great Lakes Towers?
Questions 1 and 2 are pretty closely linked, so here is the nearest I have to an answer:

Our timeline is defined by both the construction schedule and raising finance and I'll give you an idea of some of the issues surrounding these things.

Construction is complicated, firstly, because we are building on a brownfield site and, also, because our building has certain structural and size requirements that are affected by the brownfield soil conditions. Therefore, we are obliged to create a brownfield plan and have this approved by the State before we can begin construction. We are hopeful that we can get this approval at the April MEGA Board meeting and this should allow us to break ground sometime in summer 2009. Depending on how much site remediation and foundation work is required, we should then be around nine months away from being ready to begin building towers. As I'll explain in the next paragraph, this dovetails quite nicely with the financing piece.

Raising money is also difficult: we are about three- quarters of the way towards our funding target but, our finances aren't the only issue. As I'm sure you're aware, the main effect of the "credit crunch" has been that banks aren't lending to businesses ..... including windfarm developers. This means that although utilities such as DTE Energy are legally obliged to buy or develop power from renewable sources, many developers are currently struggling to get construction loans and this obviously has a knock-on effect in terms of demand for turbines and towers. Within the industry, this is viewed as a temporary problem and we feel that the wind industry will be back on its growth track by the middle of 2010.

My view is that we will begin hiring towards the end of this year for a few key positions and it will probably be the first quarter of 2010 before we are hiring in significant numbers. That said, the situation is pretty fluid at the moment and we probably won't have a hard timeline until April 2009.

Question 2 has quite a complicated answer and probably doesn't interest everyone, so I'll post separately on that.
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4 comments:

  1. Quality GuyFebruary 12, 2009 at 2:00 AM

    This sounds good Ian and I look forward to this opportunity. It sounds like the company has everything under control, considering what can be controlled. Is it possible to find out what these key positions that you mentioned will be?

    Thanks,

    Dale

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tucker ScofieldFebruary 13, 2009 at 4:09 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tucker ScofieldFebruary 13, 2009 at 4:28 PM

    I am a native of Michigan (born in Lansing, grew up in Temperance) and now work for a company in Atlanta, GA that manufactures shot blast equipment. We are the preferred vendor in North American tower facilities for plate blast equipment used to clean the plate prior to rolling. We also manufacture an OD blaster for tower sections that significantly reduces the time spent cleaning and profiling prior to paint.

    Hopefully our politicians and bankers will get their act together very soon and free up the credit markets so that many of the projects that are currently stalled can move forward. And when Great Lakes Towers is ready, I hope you'll allow us the chance to earn your business on some shot blast equipment.

    ReplyDelete
  4. jlrJanuary 15, 2010 at 5:14 PM

    This is the beginning of the first quarter of 2010. Has the hiring begun for the "significant numbers" and where does one apply for employment?

    ReplyDelete

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