The Sif-Smulders joint venture will manufacture 64 transition pieces (TPs) for EnBW’s He Dreiht offshore wind farm in Germany.
According to Raf Iemants, Managing Director of Smulders, the production of TPs will start in March 2023 at the company’s yard in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, with the last load out scheduled for April 2024.
The 64 transition pieces, each of which is up to 30 metres high and has a diametre of almost 8.5 metres, have a total weight of the transition pieces is 36.3 Kton.
“For Sif this valuable order, which was already included in our orderbook as a project under exclusive negotiation, is an important contributor to a stable order backlog till mid-2024. Our total orderbook now has approximately 250 Kton firm orders and 20 Kton projects in exclusive negotiations for the period 2023-2024. We expect that the total production in 2023 will be approximately 200 Kton” , said Fred van Beers , CEO of Sif.
“He Dreiht is among the biggest planned offshore wind power projects in Europe and is scheduled to go into operation in 2025” , said Raf Iemants , Managing Director of Smulders. “The order is one of the largest in our history and will occupy a significant part of our capacity in the coming years”.
The transition pieces will be installed on top of monopiles that will be delivered by Steelwind Nordenham, which received an order from EnBW last month.
In April, EnBW awarded Heerema Marine Contractors with the contract to transport and install the 64 monopiles and transition pieces for the project.
During the installation operations, Heerema will use the IHC IQIP double-walled noise mitigation system NMS-10,000 amongst other systems to reduce noise pollution, the company said.
The foundations will support the Vestas 15 MW wind turbines, for which the turbine supplier received a conditional order earlier this month and entered into an agreement with Cadeler to install the 64 units at the He Dreiht site, located within the German Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the North Sea, about 85 kilometres north of the Borkum Island and 95 kilometres west of the Helgoland Island.
EnBW secured rights to develop the 900 MW project in April 2017 by placing a zero-subsidy bid in the first competitive tender in Germany.
The wind farm is scheduled to be commissioned by 2025.