RENEW Energy offers a variety of services to a wide array of clientele. One of the largest divisions of our company is that of Remanufacturing. 

Our Remanufacturing services include gearbox rebuilding, main shaft rebuilding, engineering solutions, logistics management, and more. 

The Remanufacturing division of RENEW Energy wouldn’t be what it is, if it wasn’t for its fearless leader, Gary Cavigielli.

Cavigielli is the VP of Remanufacturing and R&D, and the division has been a labor of love for him for many years. 

He started out his career in automotive repair, working at his own facility for many years. Eventually, he grew tired of that gig and was looking for a new career in a different industry. He found that new career within the wind industry. 

“I’ve been in the wind since 2009,” Cavigielli stated. “I worked a couple years both in the shop and out in the field doing tower repairs. And I came on board with RENEW in 2011, and that’s when we started the remanufacturing facility here in Sioux Falls. So I’ve kind of been here from the start.” 

Once hired, it was Cavigielli’s responsibility to, more or less, help build the Remanufacturing Division from the ground up. 

“When I walked in the shop, there was one gearbox in the entire facility,” he laughed. “So I literally came in on the ground floor. I didn’t have a specific title. I was a shop tech and worked quite a few years hand-in-hand with Curt Eliason one of the founding fathers of Renew, trying to get the ball rolling, if you will. And then once we got to where we grew a little bit in scope and size, I became a Shop Manager and then moved up to the GM of Remanufacturing.”

That happened in 2016 and, in the subsequent 6 years, Cavigielli has grown the division from two people into 30. 

Eventually, RENEW was acquired by TAKKION and that move allowed the Remanufacturing Division to grow even more, both in scale and in inventory. 

“With the TAKKION acquisition, when they bought RENEW, there’s a couple of things that happened,” Cavigielli stated. “It really gave us the capital that we needed for the inventory side of things. You can’t build gearboxes without parts. And being independent, we’re pretty diversified so we don’t just work on one make or model. So it takes quite a bit of inventory and the acquisition has given us the capital to be able to increase our inventory, which allows us to have the parts we need to keep up with the demand of the rebuilds.” 

Cavigielli said that the expansion has allowed RENEW to provide even better service to their customers which, he said, is the whole point of the division. 

“At the end of the day, we’re here to help customers out with what they need,” he said. “We’re here to hopefully save them some money and reduce down times for them. So we’re very customer-driven and, with that extra capital, it’s really helped us mitigate the lack of parts, so we can supply and rebuild components in a timely manner.” 

Throughout the last six years, Cavigielli has built a team of highly-trained professionals that do good work in a timely fashion. 

“My job is to simply do whatever is needed to support the Remanufacturer team; whatever they need to do to allow them to take care of our customers,” he stated. “Over the years, we’ve really developed a very strong core group of people that are very good at their job. So my role is, whether it’s out on the floor, answering a technical question, or whether it’s in the office quoting, or everything in between, I kind of touch it all.”

And that’s what a good manager should be doing. He (or she!) should know everything about everything that his employees are doing. He should be the one that people can go to with questions, and he should be able to answer them. 

That is the kind of manager that RENEW, and TAKKION, expect and it’s exactly the kind of manager that they have gotten with Cavigielli. And his team is all the better because of it. 

“We’ve seen huge growth,” he stated. “Like I said, we’ve got a strong core of people and when you look back at what we’ve accomplished and the amount of growth we’re seeing, and the amount of growth that’s coming – I’m amazed that we’re able to do as much as we can with the people that we have. I really think it points to the strength of our group.” 

That strength came from everybody involved on the team coming together with a common goal, which was providing the absolute best service to their customers. 

“Nothing happens easily,” Cavigielli said. “Nothing happens quickly. Throughout the years, we’ve worked really hard to develop our processes, our procedures, and everything that’s needed to be able to put the tools in front of our people to allow them to be able to do their job efficiently and effectively. And the proof of that is the fact that just last week, we became ISO certified, which was a huge hurdle for us. Over the years, it’s just been living in that state of constant improvement to keep growing, as people and individuals, and with processes and procedures; it’s been constant improvement to get where we are. And the end goal is simply to be able to take care of our customers.”