Teesside-headquartered Francis Brown Ltd has won a contract to fabricate 26 steel boat landings for the wind turbines that will be located at the 588MW Beatrice offshore wind farm.
The family run company signed the contract for the boat landings with Burntisland Fabrications (BiFab). In June 2016, BiFab won a contract to supply 26 wind turbine jacket substructures for the wind farm. The fabrication contract was awarded to BiFab by Seaway Heavy Lifting.
10 of the jacket substructures are expected to be ready for delivery in August 2017, with the remaining 16 scheduled to be completed and delivered in April 2018.
Beatrice is located in the Outer Moray Firth on the North Western point of the Smith Bank, approximately 13 km off the Caithness coastline. The development site will cover an approximate area of up to 130km and will consist of 84 Siemens 7MW turbines.
Jamie Brown, Chief Executive Officer at Francis Brown, said: “We’re thrilled to have secured this deal which will aid the construction of the Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm located in the Outer Moray Firth. The project is one of the largest private investments ever made in Scottish infrastructure and we’re proud to be part of the development. We’ve steadily grown the business organically over the generations and now have a highly skilled work force manufacturing for some of the UK’s most prestigious tidal, wind and subsea oil and gas projects.”
Seaway Heavy Lifting and Subsea 7 jointly won a GBP 1.3 billion EPCI contract for wind farm turbine foundations and array cables to be installed at the wind farm. The two companies will project manage, design, engineer, fabricate and install jacket foundations and array cables for 84 wind turbines, and perform the transportation and installation of the offshore transmission modules.
Alongside BiFab, Beatrice foundations have put to work Bladt Industries, Smulders, Sif, and EEW SPC.
The offshore construction works at the wind farm site are scheduled to start in 2017. The wind farm is expected to become fully operational in 2019.