CBC news
Posted: Jan 21, 2012 4:54 PM
Despite layoffs this week, Nova Scotia's Economic Development Minister says he's optimistic about the future of the DSTN wind tower manufacturing plant in Trenton.
"DSTN is experiencing what I would chalk up to as some growing pains. I still remain confident that the future is bright for them," Paris said Saturday.
The subsidiary of Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering laid off 32 workers, a spokesman confirmed Friday.
The plant has received $70 million in federal and provincial funding.
The Nova Scotia government owns 49 per cent of the business.
"This is somewhat a new industry, and it's even newer here in Nova Scotia," Paris said.
"DSTN is a new player in the game, they have had some contracts, obviously they need more. It's a competitive global market and I think as DSTN's reputation grows, the longer that they stay around, I remain confident that they will serve rural Nova Scotia well."
The company will undergo some in-house maintenance and some of those employees may get work as a result, DSTN spokesman Brad Murray told Pictou County's The News.
DSTN recently announced a production partnership with Seaforth Energy Inc., a wind turbine manufacturer in Dartmouth.
As part of the agreement, Seaforth Energy will train DSTN staff to manufacture wind tower blades.
The company hopes the first blades will be ready by the end of March, Murray told the local newspaper.
Murray said DSTN has also approached some of its employees about training at a company plant in Korea for a month.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2012/01/21/ns-dstn-lay-offs.html?cmp=rss
Read the comments section too.
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Well, I get to say "I told you so". The writing was on the wall from the very beginning of this venture. I feel bad for the people laid off, but any business that needs consistent government money - no, not government money, OUR money - to keep it going is ultimately always going to fail.
3 comments:
So you are happy that 32 folks are out of work? By the way the previous owners there before were much more heavily supported by the government, than this current group. Check your facts and look at the support that Trenton Works got over the decades they were in operation, all the way up to when Greenbrier came in and then left. This was an abandoned plant where there were no workers and someone came here with an innovative idea to try and reach out to the wind turbine tower market. Do you know that the closest tower manufacturer is like in Fort Erie. These guys can compete in a market that is going to exist with our without the likes of you and you want to crap all over them. What do you support? why don't you start blogging about innovative ideas on how to change the world and not harp on those that are making a difference.
RL
Of course I support the workers. I hope they can find sustainable employement in an industry that has a future without having to be buoyed by tax dollars. You prove my point that tax dollars were not enought o save the previous plant and its the same story here all over again.
My innovating, change-the-world blog is somewhere else. This is the Pugwash wind farm blog :)
An industry that has a future, a blog somewhere else that wants to change the world. Come on!
Why does noone else that is part of your movement actually post here? Why has it been like over a year since there was a post? How much experience do you actually have being around wind farms? I believe it is limited to what you search out on the web and sitting in on the wheeler reports at Dal doesn't qualify you as an expert. The web does not have all the answers and if you really have something here than travel the world and tell your story....and when they ask, so what is another alternative to the quagmire that we are in, what will you say? Wind is part of the solution and you are part of the problem.
RL
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