By Tom Still | Wisconsin Technology Council
The announced move of Kestrel Aircraft Corp. to Superior may strike some skeptics as a curious landing strip for a company in the business of making small passenger planes. Don’t bail out on this story just yet. Wisconsin has more air and space credibility than meets the eye.
While more than 60 percent of the nation’s aerospace jobs are clustered in six states — Washington, California, Texas, Kansas, Connecticut and Arizona — Wisconsin can stake claim to a small but growing aerospace industry.
Those assets range from university-based space research in Madison to the world-renowned Air Venture in Oshkosh to commercial manufacturers such as Gulfstream, a General Dynamics subsidiary with a plant in Appleton.
The newest addition to Wisconsin’s aerospace cluster is Kestrel, which will move its headquarters and production from Brunswick, Maine, to Superior. The company already has engineering and design offices just across the border in Duluth, Minn.
Gov. Scott Walker and other state and local officials announced last week that Kestrel, lured by a mix of tax credits and loans, will create 600 jobs by 2016 through production of single-engine turboprop planes that seat six to eight passengers.
Read more: http://chippewa.com/news/opinion
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