NEWS

Wind towers setting sail in Manitowoc

Josh Lintereur
USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin
Broadwind Towers loads one of a dozen 50-ton wind tower sections onto a barge on Saturday, June 18. The barge would be heading to an Ohio wind farm likely on Sunday or Monday.

MANITOWOC - It’s no submarine, but what’s believed to one of the largest industrial products to leave Manitowoc’s harbor in decades is slated to set sail in the coming days.

On Friday, Broadwind Towers brought in a pair of cranes and prepared to begin loading a dozen 50-ton wind tower segments onto a barge headed for an Ohio wind farm.

The load is the first of six or so slated to set sail this summer out of the Illinois-based company’s Manitowoc plant.

Company officials said the shipment tops a million pounds and will be riding aboard a barge that’s almost as long as a football field.

“The barge is massive,” said Matt Boor, OEM program manager at Broadwind, before the shipment was loaded. “A dozen of these things on one barge … I’m sitting here now trying to visualize that.”

The shipment is likely one of the largest to travel on the water in years from the Manitowoc port, which has traditionally been known more for ship-building than cargo, said Caitlin Clyne, registrar at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum.

The largest loads moving through here today are typically shipments of rock, she said.

The city saw its last World War II submarine built by Manitowoc Shipbuilding launch in 1944, according to the Manitowoc County Historical Society.

The company launched the Edward L. Ryerson in 1960, which was its last freight-carrying vessel built in Manitowoc, said Amy Meyer, the history society’s executive director, adding the Ryerson was so long it barely made it out of the river.

For Broadwind, which normally ships via truck, the wind tower shipment marks its first on water.

Broadwind Towers loads one of a dozen 50-ton wind tower sections onto a barge on Saturday, June 18. The barge would be heading to an Ohio wind farm likely on Sunday or Monday.

Boor said the company has long contemplated using water routes given the Manitowoc plant’s location on South 16th Street, along the Manitowoc River, which is the same site as the former Manitowoc Shipbuilding.

Doing so, however, required a destination near water and a client that was open to the idea.

“If you’re going to Denver, that won’t work. But this blows the doors open to anything on the Great Lakes,” Boor said.

Shipping on the water can have significant logistical advantages, Boor said, as it means avoiding having to truck 75-foot tower sections through high-traffic urban areas.

It also can bring shipping costs down.

“There’s no traffic on the lake. You’re not trying to get through Chicago,” Boor said. “You push it out of downtown Manitowoc and you’re gone. Two bridges and a break wall and it’s on open water.”

Loading the barge will take about two days and will require two cranes lifting opposite ends of the tower segments before the towers are lowered onto the boat.

The sections constitute three towers measuring about 300 feet tall.

Once the shipment arrives in Ohio, it will be loaded onto trucks and brought to a new wind farm about 40 minutes north of Cincinnati, near the city of Monroe.

Broadwind officials declined to identify the specific wind farm.

Boor expected the barge to be fully loaded by Sunday, June 19, and said it will move out along the Manitowoc River that same day, or possibly Monday, and will be visible from various points downtown.

It will arrive in Ohio in about three to four days, though the timeline is a moving target given that it’s a first for Broadwind.

“I’ll have a better answer for you in about two weeks,” Boor said.

Reach USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin Reporter Josh Lintereur at 920-453-5147, jlintereur@gannett.com or on Twitter @joshlintereur.

Wind tower being loaded on the barge.