On 29th September, the Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs, Henk Kamp, officially opened Sif’s new assembly and coating facility at the Maasvlakte 2 terminal in the Port of Rotterdam.
The new facility will increase Sif’s annual capacity from 225 kilotons to 300 kilotons. Components manufactured at the Roermond site can be assembled at the Rotterdam facility into complete monopiles with a diameter of up to 11 meters, a length of 120 meters, and a weight of around 2,000 tons.
Once the complete monopiles have been coated in the four separate blasting and painting rooms, they are stored on the facility’s 103-acre grounds until delivery via the specially constructed quay.
The grounds can accommodate the simultaneous loading of two installation ships of monopiles and transition pieces.
The facility is currently equipped with two fully operational production lines, which have the capacity to produce four complete monopiles per week.
The project took a total of approximately 30 months to complete, from the signing of the partnership agreement between Sif and Port of Rotterdam in March 2015 and the launch of production in September 2016 up to and including the commissioning of the second production line and the facility’s official opening this year. The operation coincided with the upgrade of the production facilities at Sif’s Roermond site.
This marks the completion of an investment program involving an amount of roughly EUR 90 million, created by Sif to enable offshore wind farm developers to start using a new generation of wind turbines with larger capacities.