Vaisala expands U.S. operations following NOAA contract

LOUISVILLE – A Finnish environmental and industrial measurement company continues to expand its U.S. operations at the Colorado Technology Center business park in Louisville.

Vaisala Inc. signed a lease for 15,184 square feet of additional office and industrial space at 246 S. Taylor Ave. This is the second expansion for the company, which built its own 40,000-square-foot building at 194 S. Taylor Ave. in 2003, and leased 15,600 at 246 S. Taylor in November 2006.

Neil Littman and Scott Reichenberg with The Colorado Group helped broker Vaisala’s latest real estate deal.

Vaisala now owns and leases nearly 70,800 square feet of space in the area. It employs 90 people and plans to hire more, said Alan Reid, president and chief financial officer.

The latest expansion was needed when Vaisala was awarded a contract from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Vaisala will work to design and develop new wind sensors to upgrade NOAA’s wind profiler network for the National Weather Service. The upgrade will enhance weather prediction data, which is distributed in real-time to meteorologists, scientists and the government.

“Assuming we’re successful in this design phase, we would move onto the production phase, and that would require additional hiring,” Reid said.

Vaisala has more than 165 atmospheric remote sensing installations worldwide. Its new wind profiler is a Doppler radar that provides vertical profiles of horizontal wind speed and direction, and vertical wind velocity to an altitude of 16 km above ground level. The system will operate unattended and provides continuous, near real-time atmospheric wind and temperature data.

 Vaisala was awarded phase one of the NOAA wind profiler upgrade project in March. The current phase of engineering design is scheduled for completion in March 2009.

Vaisala is headquartered in Finland and employs more than 1,100 worldwide.  It is listed on the Nordic Exchange in Helsinki and reported revenues of 224.1 million euros, or about $360 million, in 2007.

Contact David Clucas at 303-440-4950 or dclucas@bcbr.com.

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