Bilfinger Berger, together with Polish partners, have established a joint venture for the production of steel foundations for offshore wind turbines.
The Group, together with steel construction specialists Crist and the state-owned investment fund MARS, will manufacture steel structures that will be used as foundations for wind turbines in deep waters. Investment volume for the production location amounts to €50 million. Bilfinger Berger holds a 62.5 percent stake in the joint venture, Crist holds 25 percent and MARS the remaining 12.5 percent.
Once the facility goes into operation in 2014, more than 400 employees will process 80,000 tons of steel and manufacture foundations for 80 wind turbines each year on Gryfia. “Bilfinger Berger is thus not only in a position to install steel foundations on the open seas, but can now also produce them itself in advance” , says Joachim Enenkel , who is responsible for civil engineering in the Executive Board of Bilfinger Berger. This deeper vertical integration offers an important competitive advantage through which Bilfinger Berger intends to solidify its leading market position in the installation of foundations on the high seas. “For our Civil unit, this development a further step in its efforts to position itself as a specialist for intelligent civil engineering services in the area of energy and mobility” , according to Joachim Enenkel . Bilfinger Berger, together with its Danish joint venture partner Per Aarsleff, is responsible for the foundations of about one third of all the wind turbines undertaken to date on the North and Baltic Seas. Currently, work on the construction of ‘London Array’ in the Thames Estuary before the English coast is in full swing. Once completed, it will be the world’s largest offshore windpark.
Bilfinger Berger expects continued dynamic demand in this business. The current annual installation volume for offshore wind power in the North and Baltic Seas must grow significantly before the climate protection goals that have been established can be reached.
[mappress]
Offshore WIND staff, April 10, 2012; Image: bilfinger