OGN Voices Concern over UK Content after First EA1 Foundation Contract Went to Spain

Senior management of Offshore Group Newcastle (OGN) and North Tyneside MP Mary Glindon had a meeting with UK Energy Minister Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe, as the company is worried about local content in UK offshore wind projects.

OGN, which teamed up with Belgian Smulders this year, expressed its concern after the first East Anglia ONE foundation lot was won by two Spanish companies, keeping OGN from utilizing its GBP 50 million foundation manufacturing facility at Hadrian Yard, according to Chronicle Live.

At the beginning of last year, OGN halted its plan to build the facility at Hadrian Yard in Wallsend, which could create 1,000 new jobs, saying that delays and uncertainty in the UK’s offshore wind sector have influenced the decision.

Last month, Iberdrola, Spanish company behind the large UK offshore wind project, also awarded its compatriot Navantia with a further EUR 65 million contract to build an offshore substation for East Anglia ONE.

“Iberdrola have elected to buy Scottish Power and to underpin their profitability applied for enormous subsidies that have been granted by British Government. This privilege in my view carries with it a social responsibility and a responsibility to the UK tax payer which can be satisfied by fulfilling the commitments they made to Government officials regarding the use of the UK supply chain,” Chronicle Live cites Dennis Clark, chairman of OGN, as saying.

Following the meeting with OGN and the energy minister, Mary Glindon said that “there will be further action to look any possibility of getting a more legal to bargain for UK content” and that the ScottishPower (Iberdrola) project has work that still needs to be won by companies, hoping for a positive outcome for UK businesses. Namely, Spanish Navantia and Windar won a contract to build 34 out of 102 foundations.

Glindon went on to say that she has been in contact with Iain Wright, chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee, to see what could be done to allow for more opportunities for UK content in projects such as East Anglia ONE.

In another news, RenewableUK today welcomed the announcement that DONG Energy has awarded the UK-based JDR Cables with a contract to supply inter-array cables to what will be the world’s biggest offshore wind farm, the 1.2GW Hornsea Project One, thus contributing the efforts to increase local content in offshore wind projects across the UK.