Big gears and wind turbines go together like bees and honey, peas and carrots, bread and butter and—well, you get the idea. Wind isn’t just big right now, it’s huge. The wind industry means tremendous things for the energy dependent world we live in and especially big things for gear manufacturers and other beleaguered American industries.

When Belgium-based Hansen Transmissions was under the ownership of Invensys plc in the late 1990s, the parent company was dropping not-so-subtle hints that the industrial gearbox manufacturer was not part of its long-term plans. Yet Hansen’s CEO Ivan Brems never dreamed that, less than a decade later, he would be working for an Indian company.