ALE Starts Load-Out of Navantia’s Wikinger Jackets

Heavy-lifting specialists ALE today reported that it had performed the first load-out of jacket foundations for the Wikinger offshore wind farm.

The first jacket, weighing 625t, was loaded-out using self-propelled modular transporters (SPMTs) and a CC8800 crawler crane in Ferrol, Spain.

ALE has been contracted to perform a total of 58 land transportations (two per jacket) using SPMTs and 29 load-outs using a crawler crane during 2016. The company started with the project in January by performing the weighing and land transportation of the first jackets at the Navantia Fene Shipyard.

Foundations will be loaded on transport ships in batches of 4 jackets. Piles for the jackets will be loaded by Windar at the Avilés harbour.

Wikinger will comprise 70 foundations, supporting Adwen’s 5MW wind turbines, with Bladt Industries in charge of supplying the remaining 41 jackets.

The installation of the first foundations at the offshore wind farm site started in April.