Recession? What recession? Nordex's Jonesboro wind turbine plant is still on track.

  Nordex USA's plans to build its $100 million U.S. wind turbine manufacturing facility here are on schedule despite the current economic downturn.

Joe Brenner, vice president for production for Nordex USA, told a Jonesboro Area Chamber of Commerce Power Breakfast yesterday that the German wind turbine company still plans to start production in Jonesboro in January, 2010.

The company announced its choice of Jonesboro for the factory site in late October, 2008.

Curt Hodges, business reporter for the Jonesboro Sun, reported in today's paper that Brenner confirmed, "At this point it looks like that’s how it will be. We are in the design stage. Everything has been positive.”

The factory will be build on 187 acres in the Jonesboro Technology Industrial Park and will employ about 700 people.

Brenner told The Sun he sees recent layoffs at wind energy-related companies in the Little Rock area as “blips” and added that “for the mid-term and long-term,” wind energy companies are stable and growing.

LM Glasfiber of Little Rock announced Tuesday it will lay off more than 150 workers, saying developers are having trouble financing wind farm projects because of the current credit environment.

John Sawyer, CEO of Aspen Transportation of Jonesboro and a sponsor of the breakfast event at the Jonesboro Holiday Inn, said, "They say we are in a depression. You're going to have to leave this ZIP code to prove that what you read in The Wall Street Journal is fact."

And they're hiring. This is from the Nordex USA Web site.