SSE Backs UK´s Largest Offshore Wind Tower Facility to be Build in Scotland
SSE is providing substantial financial backing for a new state-of-the-art offshore turbine tower tubular rolling manufacturing plant in the Scottish Highlands with debt investment of £15 million, helping green light an investment of over £110 million in a new UK-based offshore wind manufacturing plant in the Cromarty Firth.
SSE’s multi-million-pound debt investment makes it the largest single UK backer behind plans by Scottish-headquartered energy services company Global Energy Group (GEG) and leading offshore wind tower manufacturing specialist, Haizea Wind Group (Haizea), to build what will be the UK’s largest offshore wind tower manufacturing facility at Port of Nigg near Inverness. The cost of the new facility, inclusive of rolling machinery robotics and a new blast and paint shop is £110-120m.
Nigg Offshore Wind (NOW) will be a giant, 450-meter-long, 38,000m2 factory, capable of rolling steel plate to supply towers in excess of 1,000 tonnes each and other products, to the booming UK offshore fixed and floating wind industry in the UK and abroad. As a strategic backer behind the plant, SSE Renewables will be placing manufacturing orders with the factory from its leading pipeline of large-scale UK offshore wind projects. SSE Renewables expects to announce a first order contract with NOW in the near future.
Once operational, the NOW plant will support the creation of up to 400 new full-time direct manufacturing jobs as well as more than 1,800 indirect jobs in the UK, with an estimated 1,100 of these in Scotland.
