Spain - Gamesa workers prepare in Europe for turbine work

It wasn’t quite like joining the Navy and seeing the world. But nearly three dozen new employees of Gamesa Corp. recently visited one of the world’s most beautiful areas – the company’s homeland of Spain – to train for their new jobs. The international windmill-blade manufacturer is preparing to open its new plant near Ebensburg in May. Hourly production workers, front-line supervisors and production managers learned the intricacies of building the fiberglass- and carbon-based blades. They stayed six to 18 weeks in Samosas, a quaint farmland community three hours from the Portuguese border. There, they received hands-on training from Spanish workers with years of experience in the wind-energy industry.

“It was quite an experience,” Gamesa employee Joe Satkovich of Windber said. “We left to come home in December and I still had the windows of my hotel open,” Satkovich said. “During the summer it is over 100 degrees on average, and humid.” During the day, the local workers tackled a language barrier while trying to learn every aspect of producing the 150-foot-long blades. In their off time, they stayed in nearby Ferrol, a city of about 80,000 – as tourists. Satkovich and two of his traveling companions said the Gamesa training expedition took them away from friends and family. But they came home with a global view of their new jobs at Fiberblade LLC/Gamesa Eolica.

Construction on the 204,000, $42 million plant – Gamesa’s first U.S. facility – began last summer. The plant is nearly ready to begin production next month, said Richard Durina, a Reading native who relocated to the region as human resources manager at Fiberblade. “We’re testing now. We’re making sure all of the bells and whistles work,” During the past three months, they have been helping to train what will eventually be about 200 workers at Gamesa. “As Gamesa opens other plants, they’ll train those workers here because this is the first place in the United States to open up,” Durina said. The trio said they would volunteer to return to Spain if Gamesa asked. The men were located 15 minutes from the beaches of the Atlantic Ocean. While Spain is about as same distance from the equator as Pennsylvania, the climate is warmer.