Jan De Nul has taken delivery of its jack-up vessel, Voltaire, from the COSCO Shipping Shipyard in China.
The vessel had been delivered by the shipyard on 15 December, and departed for Dubai on the morning of Tuesday, 20 December.
Designed in-house, Voltaire will be used to transport, lift and install offshore wind turbines, transition pieces, and foundations.
Voltaire is the world’s tallest jack-up installation vessel, standing taller than the Eiffel tower, according to Jan De Nul. The vessel has a crane capacity of 3,000 tonnes, four legs of 130 metres, and a capacity to lift 16,000 tonnes of useful cargo out of the water.
The vessel’s first deployment will be on the 3.6 GW Dogger Bank Wind Farm project offshore the UK, the world’s largest offshore wind farm, transporting and installing a total of 277 GE Haliade-X turbines with up to 14 MW in individual capacity some 130 kilometres off the coast of Yorkshire.