Nordex moving into new head office in HamburgCEO Richterich: “Hamburg is an ideal base for our international expansion”.
Hamburg, January 21, 2011. Nordex SE is concentrating its head office at a new building which has been constructed in accordance with ecological principles in the Hamburg suburb of Langenhorn. In the presence of Hamburg’s mayor Christoph Ahlhaus, Nordex today declared its new corporate head office officially open. With some 500 jobs, this is one of the largest new settlements in the renewable energies segment in Hamburg. “For us, Hamburg is an ideal location from which we are able to additionally extend our international activities and manage our regional companies in Europe, America and Asia,” said Thomas Richterich, CEO of Nordex SE.
Said Ahlhaus: “Over the past few years, the Hamburg city government has systematically been orienting its economic policies to encouraging the technologies of the future. As a result, more and more green-tech companies are settling in Hamburg. Nordex provides the best example of this. The new head office will be making a crucial contribution, allowing Hamburg and its metropolitan region to additionally reinforce their status as an important center for future-oriented energies and imbuing the city’s title as the 2011 European Green Capital with life.”
Known as the “Nordex Forum”, the new building has a gross floor area of around 15,000 m2, providing sufficient space for up to 700 employees. In the event of greater space requirements, it will be possible to double the capacity to up to 1,200 employees in the medium term by means of a further construction phase. Explained Richterich: “One key factor for us is the added efficiency. The effects of short routes, greater sharing amongst employees and heightened motivation can already be measured so shortly after the relocation.”
In keeping with Hamburg’s status as 2011 European Green Capital, the German Society of Sustainable Building has awarded the Nordex Forum a “gold” certificate on the occasion of its official opening. “Among other things, the Nordex Forum has been awarded the certificate in recognition of the fact that the building betters the rules stipulated in the Energy Savings Ordinance by well over 20 percent thanks to the use of energy-efficient building installations. Thus, Nordex has not only constructed an attractive and prestigious building in architectural terms but also a very energy-efficient one,” said Heiner Helbig, a member of the management board of Hochtief Construction, which built the new head office.
The building is owned and operated by the real estate division of life insurance company Swiss Life. “We had been planning for quite some time to add one or two attractive commercial buildings to supplement our real estate portfolio in a structurally interesting region such as Hamburg. We are pleased to have found in Nordex SE the right partner,” said Klaus G. Leyh, CEO of Swiss Life in Germany. “What I also found compelling was the integrated design of this green building, which boasts high resource efficiency and pays particular attention to sustainability aspects.”