Industry Investment - Feature Sample

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Industry Investment Life and industry are not static, and investments in operations have to be part of a business plan. What measures are chosen depend on the need for either new technology or more capacity or both. This feature includes what some manufacturers have either done or are doing, and an inspirational story of what once was, but was lost, and had to be replaced.

While capital investments matter, so do boots on the shop floor If there is access to capital, manufacturers can buy technology—albeit that there could be a lengthy delivery date—but aside from access to raw materials perhaps the biggest challenge for companies today is finding capable employees to work on the shop floor.

From conversations with multiple companies, including several in this feature, staffing is a vexing issue. It is far from rare to hear of manufacturers that have some lines idled not for lack of work, but lack of workers, most notably machine operators.

Lack of employees has hampered wire and cable production for many companies.

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal spelled out why this troubling shortage continues to plague the field.

The share of U.S. workers employed by manufacturers has declined to under 9%, from more than 20% in the early

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1980s. What has made the picture worse is that there is stronger competition for labor from outside industry. The WSJ story noted that for years, factory jobs paid significantly more than those in many other fields, especially for less-educated workers. But according to economists, manufacturers and federal data, that has changed.

Per a WSJ analysis of federal data, going back to 2020, jobs in many sectors—including restaurants and retail— began offering higher-than-ever hourly wages relative to wages in manufacturing. It wasn’t close, let alone more, but it was closer. The average hourly pay for a factory worker in April was $23.41, 27% more than that for retail workers, according to the U.S. Labor Department. That may sound significant, but 10 years ago the average factory worker had a 40% premium.

That difference can be less, especially in states where there is a $15 an hour minimum. Amazon and Walmart both offer average wages of more than $15 an hour, and Costco upped its to $16 an hour. “Workers in some of these low-wage industries are demanding and getting better pay,” said Lawrence Mishel, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.

And there’s another aspect. Some potential workers are leery of working in a factory because of robotics and off-shoring. “We have a perception problem. People don’t know the jobs are here or that these are jobs they want,” Carolyn Lee, executive director of The Manufacturing Institute, said in an interview with CNN Business. “People think it’s a stationary, low-progression and low-knowledge industry. And that’s not the case,” Lee said.

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NKT: huge orders require significant company investments test the produced power cables on the bigger drums that will be used.

“The test hall in Cologne is a milestone in our HVDC investment program and is an important asset to meet future demand for testing longer power cables at bigger drums,” said NKT CTO Anders Jensen. He noted that the new drums, which will be approximately 8 x 12 meters, will enable the company to test longer cable lengths for large projects such as the German corridor projects.

This matters because every meter of cable is tested before it is shipped.

NKT operates two high-voltage production sites in Cologne and Karlskrona, both of which are strategically well-positioned to support the increased offshore wind activity in Europe and the German Energiewende. They are also both powered with 100% green electricity ensuring a low carbon footprint of the power cable systems as well as for the project logistics.

The test center is expected to be finished in the first The ground-breaking for NKT’s new test facility in Germany is one of two half of 2022. The building, which will be 50 m long major investments the company is making. Image courtesy of NKT. and 22 m high, will also include office space.

In combination with the test facility in Cologne, the extrusion tower in Karlskrona “will stand as a lightNeedless to say, filling that order would require investhouse of our position in the green transformation.” When ments by NKT, and the Danish company has already pledged finished in 2022, the 17-floor tower will stand 50 m above to invest more than €150 million, much of which will be for ground and 38 m under ground. The structure, 18 x 20 m expansions at its two high-voltage locations: a new test facilwide, is projected to require 7,700 tons of concrete and ity in Cologne, Germany, and a new extrusion tower for its 985 tons of armoring. production site in Karlskrona, Sweden. The investment will These two projects are essential to NKT’s desire to also include new machinery and a specially designed barge remain a global leader in XLPE and HVDC technology, for transporting offshore power cables on the river Rhine. able to meet the demands of offshore wind and global “The growing focus on renewable energy is already a power grids for green energy. key driver in the power cable market and it is a natural step for us to continue to develop our high-voltage power cable capacity, capabilities and technology,” said NKT CEO Alexander Kara. “We are preparing both for future growth and for the execution of our large order backlog of offshore wind and interconnectors projects.”

The new test center will feature advanced testing equipment from Germany’s HIGHVOLT GmbH, which specializes in high-voltage test equipment and systems. The test hall will be directly connected to the production, ensuring a smooth pass over to the test hall where the power cables will be connected using lab terminations before running the planned high-voltage tests.

The test center will also include a An artist’s likeness of what NKT’s new extrusion tower will look like at its site in new cutting center and test field to Karlskrona, Sweden. Image courtesy of NKT. ensure that it will have the capacity to In 2020, NKT was thrilled to be awarded record contracts for high-voltage power cable projects for more than €2.3 billion. The most notable orders were for the supply, design, manufacture and installation of more than 1,000 km of HVDC power cable systems for the German corridor projects, an ambitious initiative to further develop the transmission of green power from across the country.

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