Tuir Ghaoithe

I was in Kintyre all day and amongst my appointments was one to witness the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Wind Towers Scotland , the SSE owned manufacturing factory on the Machrihanish Airbase site ( itself now owned and run by a community company) and Community Windpower , a company which has a number of wind farm sites in Scotland. The MOU should lead to an order of 50 towers from 2015 , adding greatly to the security and sustainability of WTS which , in other incarnations before SSE took it over in May 2011, had a rough ride and caused considerable uncertainty in the local economy and community.

I remember being in the plant just before the take over and there was virtually nothing happening. Today there was a buzz about the place and lots of activity. The company has now got the time it takes to make a tower down to about 4 weeks and we saw several in various stages of construction.

WTS has recently taken on 11 more people , bringing its workforce up to about 130 - making it a very considerable local employer in Kintyre. It has also has ambitions to keep growing and is looking towards the offshore market.

The title of the blip, by the way, is the Gaelic name of the company which I was glad to see in use everywhere.