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Rea Magnet Wire (Nexans)
Rea Magnet Wire Company, Inc. (Fort Wayne, Indiana; acquired by Nexans SA in 2005) is a major North American enameled copper magnet wire manufacturer operating from Fort Wayne, Indiana — the same city as Essex Furukawa headquarters, making Fort Wayne the undisputed magnet wire capital of North America. Produces round and rectangular enameled magnet wire for industrial motors, generators, transformers, and automotive applications. Part of Nexans global wire and cable group (Paris; EPA: NEX; ~€6.7B revenue). The geographic concentration of Essex Furukawa and Rea Magnet Wire in the same Fort Wayne city creates a notable single-city dependency for North American magnet wire supply.
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Rea Magnet Wire (Fort Wayne)
12%High-Voltage Power Cables (Nexans)
35%Building & Distribution Wire (Nexans)
28%Automotive & Specialty (Nexans)
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Did you know2024
Nexans SA, the French conglomerate that owns Rea Magnet Wire in Fort Wayne, makes the submarine cables that carry electricity from offshore wind farms to shore AND the magnet wire that winds the generators inside those same offshore wind turbines. Nexans's high-voltage subsea cable business (its largest and fastest-growing segment) lays the HVDC cables that connect North Sea and Atlantic offshore wind parks to European national grids — cables that span hundreds of miles of ocean floor and carry gigawatts of power. Through Rea Magnet Wire, Nexans also supplies the enameled copper winding wire for the nacelle generators on those same wind turbines. No other company sits simultaneously in both the offshore wind generation supply chain (magnet wire for turbine generators) and the offshore wind transmission supply chain (submarine cables for power delivery). This vertical integration across the offshore wind energy supply chain within a single corporate parent is largely invisible — Rea Magnet Wire is a small Fort Wayne facility; Nexans is a French company most Americans have never heard of.
Nexans SA ↗Origin2023
Rea Magnet Wire was founded in Fort Wayne, Indiana — the same city as Essex (now Essex Furukawa) — making Fort Wayne the single most concentrated location for North American magnet wire production. The company was acquired by Nexans SA in 2005 as the French cable giant expanded its North American manufacturing footprint. Nexans itself was born in 2000 as a spinoff of Alcatel's cable division, a French conglomerate founded in 1898 that had built much of the world's early undersea telegraph cable network. The lineage: 19th-century Alcatel submarine telegraph cables → 20th-century Alcatel power cables → 21st-century Nexans spinoff → acquisition of American magnet wire manufacturer. The resulting entity is a €6.7 billion French cable company that owns operations spanning from ultra-fine magnet wire (Rea, in Fort Wayne) to the thickest submarine HVDC cables connecting offshore wind farms to national grids.
Nexans SA ↗