Sif- Smulders Joint Venture signs Contract with EnBW for the Fabrication of Transition Pieces for He Dreiht Offshore Wind Project
Roermond, The Netherlands/Hoboken, Belgium – 16 June 2022. Sif, in joint venture with Smulders, will manufacture 64 Transition Pieces for the He Dreiht offshore wind project. Production of all TP’s is scheduled for first half of 2023. Total weight of the 64 TP’s is 36.3 Kton.
The grid capacity of the He Dreiht offshore wind farm is 900 MW, operating 64 Vestas 15 MW turbines. The Wind Farm is located within the German Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the North Sea, about 90 kilometers north of the Borkum Island and 110 kilometers west of the Helgoland Island.
Full commissioning of the wind farm is expected in the second half of 2025.
Fred van Beers, CEO of Sif comments; “We are grateful for the confidence EnBW has expressed in their award of this project to Sif. We will put every effort in place to support EnBW and their contract partners in turning the He Dreiht project into a success. 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.”
Raf Iemants, Managing Director of Smulders says: “We are proud to be selected by EnBW for this contract based on our experience and proven track record. Likewise, we are extremely proud to be part of building up one of the first German Offshore wind projects without subsidies. He Dreiht is among the biggest planned offshore wind power projects in Europe and is scheduled to go into operation in 2025. It’s a great day for us at Smulders. The order is one of the largest in our history and will occupy a significant part of our capacity in the coming years. Production starts in March 2023 at our yard in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. The last load out is scheduled for April 2024. The transition pieces are up to 30 meters high and close to 8.5 meters in diameter. Each element weighs more than 700 tons, including secondary steel. We are the world leader in manufacturing of transition pieces and have so far delivered to a third of the world’s offshore wind turbines foundations. This project consolidates our position.”
“We are pleased to have with the joint venture of Sif/Smulders two experienced partners for the production of transition pieces on board for our first subsidy-free offshore wind farm in the North Sea,” says Jörn Däinghaus, Project Director for EnBW He Dreiht. “The expansion of renewable energies is an important focus of EnBW’s strategy. It contributes to having at least half of our generation portfolio made up of renewable energies by the end of 2025 and paves the way for the company’s climate neutrality in 2035.”
