Hollandia Offshore and Croonwolter&dros have formed a collaborative partnership to offer the operators of offshore wind farms an ‘all-in’ package.
Division director Aco van de Ven of Croonwolter&dros said: “The off-shore wind market is maturing and consolidating. Operators like to work with companies that can take on projects in their entirety. Then they have a single point of contact for both the steelwork and the technical systems. In terms of turnover the steelwork and technical installations have an approximately equal share of the contract value.
“The partnerships that put forward the best offer in both specialisations tend to get the projects. Now that Croonwolter&dros are working in collaboration with Hollandia, as equal partners, we form one of the most experienced partnerships. In addition to specialist knowledge and experience, the financial clout wielded by Croonwolter&dros parent group TBI is a factor that makes the proposition of Hollandia and Croonwolter&dros extra powerful.”
The offshore wind market is booming and developing rapidly, the companies pointed out, adding that Rotterdam-based companies in offshore services and products have a long tradition in gas and oil platforms, which can be used in the offshore wind sector.
“A closely-knit ecosystem of suppliers, sub-contractors and service providers has arisen. As all the required specialisations are available close together, this “cluster” can operate very efficiently on the international market,” said managing director Nico Noorlander of Hollandia Offshore. “As investment in the oil and gas industries has been slashed in the past few years, this sector has focused on foreign off-shore wind farms. It has been successful in that respect. Next is the Dutch market, which is seeing substantial growth in that area at the moment.”
Croonwolter&dros has been involved in the maintenance of the Prinses Amalia Windpark, in addition to other wind farms, while Hollandia was awarded a contract for a substation at Vattenfall’s DanTysk, followed by contracts for substations and modules for Riffgat and Kriegers Flak.
“The work on the DanTysk wind farm showed right from the start that it was not efficient to have separate sub-contractors for fire-extinguisher, broadcasting, fresh-water, cooling and heating systems. By the time of the work on Kriegersflak, responsibility for those systems had already been given to Croonwolter&dros. Collaboration was noticeably smooth, which made sure that the project ran efficiently with better technical solutions,” Noorlander said.