In August 2013 Smulders Projects, subsidiary of Smulders Group, secured together with Sif Group an order from Van Oord Offshore Wind Projects b.v. for the delivery of 150 Transition Pieces for the Gemini Windfarm.
Sif Group will supply the primary steel tubulars, Smulders Projects will supply and install all secondary steel and will perform surface treatment.
This achievement is a major milestone for Smulders Projects. Not only is this the largest order as for number of foundations in the company’s history, the first transition piece of this project will also be TP number 1000 produced in our facility in Hoboken, Belgium.
The Gemini Offshore Wind Farm comprises 150 turbines of 4 MW each. Gemini will be one of the largest wind farms worldwide and is to be built in the Dutch part of the North Sea, 85 km from the coast of Groningen. This project results in a more than doubling of the number of offshore wind turbines in the Netherlands: from 139 to 283 turbines. Iemants, another subsidiary of Smulders Group, is going to build the two offshore substations that will be connected to the turbines in collaboration with Cofely Fabricom and CG.
The order provides a workload until the third quarter of 2015 for our Hoboken facility. Gemini is the fourth project that Van Oord awards to Smulders Projects for TP foundations, which strengthens our view that customer focus is always rewarded.
Smulders Projects started the production of transition pieces 13 years ago. The first transition pieces were built for the first major offshore wind farm Horns Rev I. Since those pioneering days, Smulders Projects has become a market leader in offshore foundations in general and transition pieces in particular.